One of my favorite soups, and always complimented on, is French Onion Soup. Now the real thing has a specialty cheese called Gruyère which is a rare Swiss cheese.

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You can save a lot of money by just using Romano and it tastes fine.

It's very simple, but elegant to serve, and cheap. The main thing is to use good beef stock. It takes a lot of onions.

Normally you serve it with a good hearty bread like New York City. Google the Hell's Kitchen recipe.