The Year of Onion Soup?

Perhaps this will be the year of onion soup? Despite its popularity  a really good onion soup is hard to find. Often under a lid of too much, not very tasty melted cheese that usually burns the roof of your mouth, is an insipid broth with too few onions.
However this is not the case at the Breslin in New York. There the onion and bone marrow soup is full of caramelised onions and rich with the flavour of marrow bones. The soup is topped with a simple toasted baguette slice lightly covered in melted Parmesan cheese. No need to hide the soup here.

My friend Lesley in Montréal just wrote about the onion soup mania in her town. And she emailed me a postscript describing another version with bone marrow and shredded pork confit; I was almost on the next plane to Quebec.

Not only is the soup wonderful at the Breslin, take a look at these fries. When was the last time you enjoyed big fat crispy fries?
Called thrice cooked fries, a wonderful name, they live up to their name. Pieces of potato, the size of your middle finger are fried crunchy crisp on the outside and left full of light floury potato on the inside. They come with mayonnaise, a habit I've never adopted from the Belgians, but I did like the fresh pickles.

Luckily my friends helped finish the onion bone marrow soup because my hot tongue sandwich came with green lentil soup. I'd tried to substitute the onion bone marrow soup when I ordered but was politely told no. I'm glad they denied my request because the lentil soup was wonderful, a tasty layer of fat floating on the top and some kale stirred into the soup to balance the richness. And the tongue sandwich? On a baguette properly spiked with mustard, the warm tongue just melted in my mouth.