french onion soup

french onion soup either just recently went mainstream or i just started paying attention. i see it EVERYWHERE and understandably so: a lot of bread, beef broth, sweet onions, and a ton of melted cheese. what's not to love? awesome. but when everyone is serving it, it makes finding the really great stuff that much harder. i've ordered it several times before but most times it misses the mark. not all complete misses, but misses just the same. what i picture happening, those times I've ordered it, is the chef, out back, just moments away from putting on the finishing touches when the runner swoops by blankly and in a flurry and whisking it away, incomplete, to my table. some sort of altercation between runner and chef ensues. it's quite a scene.

it always seems to be missing one thing. i remember my dad ordering it once when we were vacationing in cape cod and having my first taste. it was unbelievable. all other experiences have been measured against that first one which, i admit, could be entirely distorted by my imagination.

i've made it before and, I have to say, it wasn't too difficult and it came out pretty good. but the jump from "good" to "pretty good" isn't nearly as difficult as the jump from "pretty good" to "great". mine was definitely missing something too, but its hard to put a finger on what that was. search for recipes online and you'll undoubtedly find all sorts of variations. everyone has an opinion about the key ingredient - red onion, white onion, sherry, red wine, chicken stock, beef stock, swiss, gruyere, more butter, less butter. i have to believe that, somewhere in the world, two people are coming to blows over this right now.

i was thinking about this last night at JeanRo Bistro in cincinnati while we were waiting for ours to arrive. but then we had our first taste something occurred to me, this was the closest it had ever been to that first experience. also, this was the first time i had ever ordered french onion soup at a french restaurant. perhaps the thing that had been missing the whole time was the french.