The latest issue of Restaurant Magazine links to a story I missed last week. It was the death of London's last 'Onion Johnny'.

Roscoff paid its respects this week to Jean Le Roux, a farmer who had been crossing the Channel to sell his onions door-to-door in London for more than half a century. He died last Saturday aged 73. Mr Le Roux was the last Onion Johnny in London, where he lived up to eight months of the year selling strings of Roscoff's highly-prized onion rosé and shallots to households and the city's best restaurants. The Roux brothers and restaurants such as Le Gavroche and the Waterside Inn sang the praises of his sweet onions, which he grew in his fields just outside Roscoff.

There is a nice piece at Too Many Chefs on the history of the Onion Johnnies and it includes a recipe for onion soup, for which the Roscoff onion is ideally suited.