The Real Story Behind Seinfeld’s Infamous Soup Nazi
Discover the true tale of the New York soup shop owner who inspired Seinfeld’s most notorious character, and what happened when Jerry Seinfeld met the man himself.
Jerry Seinfeld’s sitcom is packed with memorable food moments, from Babu Bhatt’s ill-fated restaurant to the infamous chocolate babka debacle. There’s also Poppie, the pizza chef with questionable hygiene, and George’s wild scheme to pinch a marble rye. The gang’s run-ins with staff at Monk’s Café are legendary. But none of these compare to the strict soup shop owner who became the centre of one of the show’s most iconic episodes.
In the seventh season, punters met Yev Kassem, a soup kitchen boss whose no-nonsense rules and sharp tongue earned him the nickname “Soup Nazi”. His soups were so good that customers put up with his tough approach, queuing up despite his reputation. But this character wasn’t just a work of fiction—he was based on a real bloke running a soup shop in New York.
The Man Behind the Legend
The inspiration for the character was Ali “Al” Yeganeh, who opened Soup Kitchen International on West 55th Street in Manhattan back in 1984. According to the show’s writer, Spike Feresten, Yeganeh wasn’t thrilled about his TV alter ego. When Feresten brought Seinfeld to the shop a year after the episode aired, Yeganeh’s reaction was blunt.
“Get the fuck out of here,”
he told Seinfeld, booting him from the queue. Seinfeld, never one to back down, shot back,
“What’s the problem? I made you famous.”
Yeganeh wasn’t having a bar of it.
“You didn’t make me famous. The Today Show made me famous.”
Seinfeld insisted,
“Well, I want soup.”
Feresten recalled that Yeganeh then delivered a real-life, expletive-heavy version of the show’s catchphrase, telling Seinfeld in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t be served. Seinfeld was shown the door, and that was that.
Soup Kitchen’s Ongoing Legacy
The original soup shop is still trading at the same spot, though it’s had a few name changes over the years. After Yeganeh’s business was shut down for tax evasion in 2017, it reopened as The Original Soup Kitchen. While Yeganeh no longer ladles out the soup himself, he still oversees the operation, and the recipes are all his. If you’re sceptical, just check the armoire.
Feresten, who penned the episode, seemed quietly chuffed that Seinfeld copped the fallout from the real-life Soup Nazi. The story of Seinfeld’s ejection from the shop is one he’s happy to share, and it’s become part of the show’s off-screen lore.
Seinfeld’s Own Favourites
Despite the episode’s fame, it wasn’t Seinfeld’s top pick from the series. He’s said he preferred others, like ‘The Pothole’, because
“It was really fun to shoot, and it was fun to set Newman on fire,”
Seinfeld once explained.
“And he screamed, ‘Oh, the humanity,’ like from the Hindenburg disaster. It’s one of my favourites.”
Another standout for him was ‘The Rye’.
“We had this idea of a Marble Rye, and we had to shoot it in an outdoor set, and this was a very expensive thing to do; it’s like a film place there at Paramount in LA. Their standing set for New York looks exactly like it, and we thought, ‘this is where the ADULT shows are, the REAL shows like Murphy Brown.’ We felt like we were a weird little orphan show. So that was a big deal for us.”