Maybe the best reason for it to be cold for half of the year in New England is that there's a longer time period to comfortably eat hot bowls of soup.
While making one at home is just as fun (and more fiscally responsible), sometimes a rainy, chilly Boston day calls for grabbing your favorite soup to-go.
And here's the great thing about soup: it's wide-ranging, from stews to bisques and broths.
Even New England has its own soup, though it's widely accessible and popular across the country. And Boston's oldest continuously operating restaurant undoubtedly serves a favorite version of the soup to locals and visitors alike.
Joseph Milano, president of Union Oyster House and the Honorary Consul General to Thailand, said the restaurant sells 10,000 gallons of clam chowder a year.
"We have no secret ingredients in our 'Chowdah,'" Milano said. "One intangible ingredient that stands out is consuming our world-famous chowder in the historic ambience of the restaurant."
What there aren't too many of are soup-forward restaurants, which may be why New England Soup Factory was consistently a favorite among our readers.
Owner and founder Marjorie Druker said her team makes 10 soups every day at their Newton restaurant. Favorites include chicken noodle and matzo ball soup because of its "healing purposes," Druker said in an email.
"Soup is the perfect meal," Druker said. "It's balanced eating by the spoonful, it chases away the chill of winter, [and] it's a blanket for your mouth and throat that feels good and tastes even better."
Boston.com asked readers to recommend their favorite soup spots so we could put it in a map, and not surprisingly, we were given plenty of clam chowder options. But our editorial staff wanted to share their picks as well, which include ramen, pho, and lentil soups. Those choices are labeled below as "Boston.com recommended," and you can some soup options in the map.
It's also important to note that there may be debates about what counts as a soup. We could squabble over the differences between soup versus stews and all the other items below, but if it was served hot, mostly liquid, usually in a bowl, and you sometimes make a slurping sound while eating it, it made the list.
Included in our map are 123 restaurants where you can grab a bowl of hot soup (or broth, stew, chili, bisque, chowder, ramen, pho, etc.) to get through these cold months.