Onion Soup

Onion soup is Holy Writ. Just ask anyone old enough to have made the midnight pilgrimage to Les Halles, the old central market of Paris, to have a bowl of cheese-topped soupe a l’oignon under the giant iron and glass pavilions filled with produce being pushed around by burly fellows (les forts des Halles) who took time off from their work to mock tourists or to couple with the putes hanging out nearby on the boulevard de Sebastopol or operating out of the dingy hôtel