The Soup Nazi - Production

Production

"The Soup Nazi" was Spike Feresten's first credited Seinfeld episode as a writer. The idea for the episode arose when Feresten told Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David about New York soup vendor Al Yeganeh, who was nicknamed "The Soup Nazi." Seinfeld and David laughed and said, "That's a show. Do that as your first show." Feresten's inspiration for the armoire subplot was a New York apartment building in which he had lived, which forbade moving furniture on certain days. The armoire thieves were written as homosexual because Larry David decided that "only gay guys would steal an armoire."

The first cast table reading for "The Soup Nazi" was held on September 28, 1995, and it was filmed before a studio audience on October 3. In the episode, Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) imitates Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. This was done at Jerry Seinfeld's suggestion, even though Louis-Dreyfus had never seen the film.