Every other row on the card commits to something. The croque is the croque; the lentil salad has been the lentil salad since the first winter. The soup row commits to a bowl and a price and nothing else, and that is deliberate.
A season here is about nine weeks long, and the vegetables that are cheap and good in week one are neither by week eight. If the card said “squash and apple” in September it would be lying by the middle of October, and nobody wants to be the person who rewrites a printed menu twice a week.
So the row says Soupe du jour, and the day says the rest. Whatever is in the pot goes on a slip in the morning, clipped to the lunch card, and it comes down by itself at half past two. The card underneath is unchanged and still true.
