Is soup a winter thing? To some. But I like it all year round. And as someone who tries not to eat too much meat, I like how filling and flavorful it is despite the fact that it involves no animal flesh. Flesh is not an appetizing word, sorry. Anyway! Lentil soup. It tastes good! Here are three of my favorites in Seattle.

1. Café Paloma: Paloma in Pioneer Square makes a hearty, lemon-laced lentil soup in the Lebanese tradition. You can get a cup with salad—excellently tart vinaigrette, and just the right amount—or a bowl that comes with toasted pita triangles. Dip those babies in there.

2. Cherry Street Coffee House: Cherry Street makes a sulfur-colored Egyptian-style lentil soup that’s pureed. It’s not served everyday, so call ahead to ensure its existence. Being a puree, it has a uniform flavor, but that uniform flavor has a really subtle peppery note to hold your interest so that you don’t think about hamburgers and how juicy-delicious they are. It comes with slices of toast (ask for olive bread) that have been doused in butter. You can pretend that it’s too much butter but you and I both know you’re secretly thrilled that your toast has been so extravagantly slathered, because when you dip it in the soup: holla. That’s a tasty combo. Besides you’re eating lentil soup for lunch, your gastronomic virtue has already been established.

3. Eltana: Yup, the bagel place on Capitol Hill. Its lentil soup, another Lebanese recipe, is brothy with about as many lentils as there are stars in Cambell’s Chicken and Stars soup. Withered islands of dark-green chard float around on top. Again, the citrus is pretty bold and definitely doing a lot of the heavy-lifting from a flavor perspective. The soup comes with an unadorned Eltana bagel and when you rip off a piece and submerge it into your soup you’ll see, as I have seen, just how absorbent Eltana bagels really are. I mean, wow. Those suckers were made for dipping.