French Onion Soup Page

A very interesting Intenet recommendation!  As you may be able to tell from the photo (click on it for a larger picture), the soup is served in an actual onion.  Typically, I don’t enjoy the soups that are served in “bread bowls” (e.g. Panera Bread), but this one was quite good.  You may be able to make out the rock salt on which the onion with its soup in it was baked.  The salt remains extremely hot (so hot that you can easily get burned by trying to pick it up).  The only real problem with the soup is that the excess cheese runs down the onion and attaches itself to the rock salt.  It becomes very difficult to enjoy the excess cheese, since you can’t really separate it from the rock salt granuals.  You end up putting the cheese and 3 or 4 granuals in your mouth, which is painfully hot, and extremely salty.  It works really well to keep the soup and cheese hot, though.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

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Apart from all of the shrubbery in this soup, it was pretty decent.  The menu says “swiss and parmesan”, but I only tasted the swiss.

Rating: 6 out of 10

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As I always do, I inquired about the type of cheese they use on the soup.  What followed was comical.  Our server responded, “Uh, mozzarella.”  Clearly, this was wrong (see the picture above).  So, I asked another passing server, and she said (more asuredly) “Mozzarella”.  So, I asked the manager, who asked the bartender (!) and he said, “Swiss.”  If anyone can find out what cheese is really on there (it’s not swiss), please let me know.  It was very good all around, but not nearly enough of whatever the cheese is.

Rating: 7 out of 10

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A couple of hunks of provolone and immature broth.  Not served in a crock, this dish appears very out of place on the menu and in the restaurant which is a mostly German-themed place.

Rating 4.5 out of 10

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Excellent quality of cheese and broth.  Great amount of gruyere and provolone, mixed with nicely caramelized onions with sherry and broth.  Very nicely done.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

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More Indianapolis parmesan with gruyere, but the parmesan was not overwhelming this time.  Lots of cheese, and the broth was pretty good. 

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

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The tour of Indianapolis F.O.S. begins at Shula’s, a high-end chain.  This one is located in the Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis.  The soup has an interesting mix of cheese, described to me as Gruyere, Provolone, Swiss, and Parmesan.  The parmesan was way, way overpowering.  I couldn’t really taste anything else about this soup.

Rating: 6.0 out of 10

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Some people have mentioned that Trader Joe’s sells a pre-packaged french onion soup, so I decided to try it out and publish a study here (without rating it, since it is not at a restaurant).  The package is frozen, including the cheese and croutons, and it is placed in an oven-safe bowl, and then either baked for 45 minutes as-is, or microwaved for 7 minutes.  If you microwave it, you must then add your own cheese and put it in the oven for around 2 minutes.  I tried it both ways, and the baked one had better broth, but the microwaved version has the benefit of being able to choose your own cheese.  In any case, I wouldn’t recommend this unless you have no alternative.

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