I eat soup all year long. But when the chill settles in? My soul demands regular bowls of bone-warming stew. And lucky for us, there isn’t a Polar Vortex out there to compete with Philly’s skilled soup masters, who ladle up a seemingly bottomless kettle of creative inspirations, traditions and comfort to slay one of the most powerful cravings there is.

Finding Philly Pho

Phở is more than just soup. It’s a way of life in a region home to the third-largest Vietnamese population on the East Coast, where few meals deliver more satisfaction for $10 or less, and a steamy pool of star anise-scented broth with rice noodles, Thai basil, jalapeño rings, and sundry cuts of meat is the equivalent of hitting the "defrost" button.

My family regularly visits Washington Avenue’s corridor of Vietnamese soup halls, where Phở 75 (1122 Washington Ave.), the pink formica palace where many first fell in love with phở’s restorative power, is still the choice for a purist’s bowl of crystalline beef broth simmered in small batches for hours. Phở 75’s Northeast Philly original (823 Adams Ave.) garnishes its bowls with a bolder blast of fragrant green herbs, but there are other places I also frequent for broths with even more complex flavor profiles.

The Tran family’s Thang Long (2536 Kensington Ave.) remains my top beef phở stop (also for grilled Hanoi-style pork), with an oxtail and marrow bone broth that leaves a tingle of charred ginger and ginseng at the back of the throat. I also have fond memories of the broth dappled with beads of molten beef fat at little Phở Cyclo Cafe (2124 S. Broad St.), which is connected to Phu Kang (5201 NJ-38, Merchantville) in South Jersey. In the northern suburbs, check out Phở & Beyond (47 Easton Rd, Willow Grove) where I prize the phở saté soup. For chicken-based phở gà, the intensely aromatic brew steeped from fresh-killed birds at Cafe Phở Gà Thanh Thanh (2539 Kensington Ave.) may be the best chicken broth in the city of any sort.

For something funkier than pho, the bún bò huế at Café Nhan (1606 W. Passyunk Ave.) is the city’s lustiest  take on the Central Vietnamese specialty rich with lemongrass, spice, and fermented shrimp paste. The Phnom Penh rice noodle soup at I Heart Cambodia ( 2207 S. 7th St.; two bells) is the Khmer way to start your morning in South Philly’s Little Cambodia. Meanwhile, the twisty handmade noodles are what I covet from Indonesian soups like the mie komplit at Sky Café (1122 Washington Ave.).

American Classics

When I need my regular Old Philly fix of snapper soup, Oyster House (1516 Sansom St.) has always set the standard. But Elwood (1007 Frankford Ave.) in Fishtown now serves a meaty, historically inspired rendition by the tureen with a spicy cruet of “pepper sherry” on the side. I appreciate a good chowder, too, and The Love (130 S. 18th St.) serves an impressively creamy-but-creamless rendition steeped with fresh clams, lemongrass, and potatoes topped with Old Bay-dusted cornbread crumbles.

Creamy tomato soups are pure comfort at Soup Kitchen Cafe (2146 E. Susquehanna Ave.), Café Lutécia (2301 Lombard St.), and N. 3rd (801 N. 3rd St.), where it’s a special that chef Peter Dunmire serves with Vermont cheddar grilled-cheese sandwiches, along with his regular rotation soups of chowders, goulash, bacon-split pea soup, and porcini mushroom bisque. Creamy mushroom soups once ruled Philly’s Restaurant Renaissance kitchens. Your best bets are now in the suburbs at Silver Spoon in Wayne (503 W. Lancaster Ave.) and The Whip Tavern in Chester County (1383 North Chatham Road). Chili is another serious cold-weather craving, and I adore the grass-fed beef chili from the Good Spoon Soupery (1400 N. Front St.) and the smokehouse treats in the beany bowl at Mike’s BBQ (1703 S. 11th St.).

The international patchwork of flavors that fill this city is often at its most compelling in soup, vividly representing immigrant communities old and new. You can taste long-settled Italian traditions in the hearty white bean “pasta-fazool” special at Fitzwater Café ( 728 S. 7th St.), while new-school pasta skills are on display in the fresh tortellini in brodo at Cry Baby Pasta (627 S. 3rd St.). Taste the beef-and-beet heart of Northeast Philly’s Borscht Belt at Ukranian Passage Restaurant (10783 Bustleton Ave.); the toothy chew of handmade noodles in the cumin-scented Uzbek lamb soup called lagman at Chaikhana Uzbekistan (12012 Bustleton Ave.); and the earthy tortilla soup at Blue Corn (940 S. 9th St.). The hominy-studded pozole at Tacos California (1030 S. 8th St.) and Adelita (1108 S. 9th St.) are among the best reasons to visit Mexican South Philly. And when you pierce the cheesy lid of molten Gruyère oozing over Parc’s (227 S. 18th St.) definitive French onion soup, that first spoonful might transport you to Paris — even with the snow falling down on Rittenhouse Square.

Top Ramen

After Philly’s first ramen boom, I’d settled into favorite bowls at two Center City standbys: the spicy miso tantan at Chinatown’s wood-clad Terakawa (204 N. 9th St.) and the Black Pig at unmarked Hiro Ramen (1102 Chestnut St.), whose cloudy rich tonkotsu broth is topped with a tender wheel of chashu pork and inky black streaks of earthy roasted garlic oil. The matzo ball-ramen soup at the original Cheu Noodle Bar (255 S. 10th St.) and its Fishtown branch (1416 Frankford Ave.) remains the witty height of Jewish-Asian fusion comfort.

Then along came Neighborhood Ramen (617 S. 3rd St.) this year, an Instagram pop-up sensation turned 20-seat hipster shop in Queen Village. It’s where Lindsay Steigerwald pays homage to her Japanese heritage while her boyfriend-chef and partner, Jesse Pryor (Morimoto, Cheu, Zahav), is turning out some artisan bowls of “ramen with intention.” Rarely have soups lingered in my imagination like these. The shoyu, whose snappy straight noodles coiled inside a clear amber chicken broth, was layered with seemingly infinite levels of nuance. A blend of three shoyu sauces? A lip-coating gloss of rendered chicken fat? Yes! Its flavors detoured direct to Tokyo with a seafood backbeat of dashi dialed up in intensity with dried niboshi sardines. Neighborhood’s equally bold take on tantan, with tender crumbles of pork and crunchy raw onions scattered over a fire-red broth, tasted like a glowing soup version of dandan noodles.