French onion is the most romantic soup of them all. Where to eat it in L.A.
I am the last person you should talk to for romance advice. Notoriously single and allergic to commitment, I’m not sure that I’m qualified to even categorize a restaurant as particularly romantic. But if prompted, as I was during last week’s Valentine’s Day festivities, I’ll tell you to plan a date night at Le Champ. And do it a few weeks after Valentine’s Day. When you make the effort outside of a fake holiday, it tends to hold more weight.
Le Champ is a new French restaurant in the Arts District that’s mostly an outdoor garden under twinkling lights. It’s dim enough for intimacy, or something like it. Dishes sound even more enticing in the server’s thick accent (it was Spanish, not French), and did I mention the garden and the twinkling lights?
This week’s recommendations include a shareable French onion soup toast from Camphor in DTLA and spicy wontons from DK Lab in San Gabriel.
And the most romantic dish you can order is the French onion soup. I’m not talking about the kind of romance one associates with chocolate-covered strawberries, Champagne and maybe oysters. The best way to demonstrate romance or show you care is with time. And this soup requires a lot of it. It’s also a one-bowl, two-spoon dish that’s really only appropriate to share with someone with whom you’re already or planning to exchange bodily fluids.
French onion soup at Le Champ
Justin Hilbert’s version at Le Champ has an especially attractive cheese top that hugs the bowl in all the right places and sort of puffs up in the middle, giving it the appearance of a pie crust. Underneath is a half beef, half chicken stock made with slow-roasted beef bones and chicken feet.
“A lot of people make stock with mirepoix,” Hilbert says, referencing the trio of carrot, onion and celery often used as a base for stocks, sauces and a variety of other dishes. “I just focus on a lot of bones.”
The stock has a noticeable sheen to it, and the depth and richness of a bone broth that’s been simmering away for hours. Hilbert caramelizes a big batch of Spanish yellow onions, adds Chardonnay and “a ton of brandy” before pouring in the stock and letting everything commingle for hours with some thyme and bay leaf. Then he adds more brandy.
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He says he learned the basic recipe from a bistro in Philadelphia, where they used veal broth and sherry. “The first time I made it here I used brandy because I didn’t have any sherry,” Hilbert says. “I had a couple of bottles of brandy and I liked it.”
The sweetly alcoholic aroma of the brandy is ever apparent alongside the fresh, floral thyme. It’s a broth that stands on its own, even without the round of buttered, toasted brioche and the sheet of Emmentaler cheese blanketed across the top.
“I’m trying to sort of separate what we do from other French restaurants in L.A., so it’s not redundant,” Hilbert says.
I shared the bowl with someone I didn’t think twice about sharing a bowl of soup with. We broke through the wall of cheese, twirled some of the melty glob around our spoons then slurped away under the warmth of the portable heaters.
Hilbert can’t remember if the soup made it onto the menu in December or January, but he says he might take it off in March, once the weather warms. “As long as it sells,” he says. “Once it gets warm and people aren’t ordering it anymore, there might be no point to having it.”
I politely disagreed.
Onion soup au gratin at the Musso & Frank Grill
The onion soup at this 105-year-old Hollywood steakhouse is the golden retriever partner I want if I ever get married. It’s consistently good, attractive in a way I’ll always appreciate and there for me when I need it.
Its dependability is due in no small part to executive chef J.P. Amateau, who is in his 14th year of running the Musso & Frank Grill kitchen. He’s only the third chef to hold that title.
“It’s been on the menu since we opened,” Amateau says. “The original chef, Jean Rue, had it on the menu. Like most chefs, you tweak it. I kept it in the sense of being the traditional classic French onion soup, but I went a step further with it.”
The broth is a days-long process that starts with simmering beef knuckle bones, chicken bones and short rib bones for hours. It’s strained, cooled and reheated and reduced multiple times with the addition of roasted beef neck bones, mirepoix, fresh tarragon, thyme and garlic. The soup is finished with sweet Maui onions caramelized in butter and some veal stock.
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The beauty of the Musso & Frank Grill soup is in the proportion and construction of the different components. Up until about a year ago, the soup was served with a single round of bread in the middle of the bowl and some grated Gruyere on top.
Now, Amateau crowds the soup with sourdough croutons and seals the bowl with both a slice of Gruyère and grated Gruyère to avoid a single lump of cheese. You end up with nice toasty bits of bread that hold their crunch in the soup and cheese you can mash into the broth for repeating cheesy pulls and bites. I like to sit and pick the bits of crunchy Gruyère off the lip of the bowl long after I’ve finished the soup.
If I see any iteration of French onion soup on a menu, I will continue to order it. I don’t care if it’s 100 degrees outside or snowing, if I’m single, attached or in a situationship. I’m forever powerless to resist the lusciousness of long-caramelized onions and bubbly cheese. Maybe I am a romantic after all.
Where to find great French onion soup
Le Champ, 1200 E. 5th St., Los Angeles, (213) 466-2046, lechampla.com
The Musso & Frank Grill, 6667 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, (323) 467-7788, mussoandfrank.com
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