The Unlikely Rise of French Tacos
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
So true! As a tourist in France, it was a great time to practise some intermittent fasting skills.
French tacos are being written about in the New Yorker and discussed positively on HN. If that doesn't make them pretentious yuppie food then nothing does.
So maybe nothing does.
100% correct. It's not even any fancy bread with grains etc like you'd get in most of EU; just a poor piece of (often so-so) baguette.
Something I found amusing is that it's been almost impossible to find typical "international" quick foods like hot dogs where I live (south-east); however, since restaurants can't function normally due to pandemic, suddenly takeaway hot dogs started appearing in recent months in many places.
[1] - No joke, standing in the street outside my apartment in Paris I could see green cross signs from 7(!) different pharmacies without moving just by looking in different directions.
Unlike other countries, in FR only pharmacies can sell drugs, no regular shops / supermarkets (even basic stuff like paracetamol), and I guess that's the reason why there are so many of them.
In general my rule of thumb is : stick to french food in France. Culturally imported dishes are often a very poor adaptation and I am often disappointed.
Having tried a lot of french tacos in Paris, Lille & Lyon (approximately one per week), famous brands and local ones, I can definitely tell you that: I found that most taste like sht. By most, I mean 95%. Most taste like bricks of "food", without any distinctive taste, are very dry (the different sauces are sucked by french fries) BUT you will feel completely full. Not fast-food full, I used the word brick and it's the most appropriate IMHO. I tried a lot of restaurants, a lot of combinations, and I just gave up of this kind of food. And if you really like this kind of food, please try the best burrito of Lyon from Taco Taco. Das good sht.
I hope you'll prove me wrong and you'll point me to good french tacos. I'm fed up trying to find a good one :)
It's weird though because I do _not_ feel the same way about regional sweets. Marrons glacés (disgusting), calissons (yuck), and macarons d'amiens (not even macarons!) can light themselves on fire. If they were any good, they wouldn't be only regional!
I'm half-French ancestry living in Austin (ATX), arguably the taco capital of the US except maybe East LA. Apparently, KCK is now an upstart rival. Mexico city is probably the capital of the world.
PS: What's up with French disdain for peanut butter? Is it just something else to feel artificially-superior about?
Peanut butter is just non-existent because there are an amazingly huge number of jams, marmelades, local honeys. Ok this is theory and what people tell you. In fact, everyone is just totally addicted to Nutella. The one and only.
US Walmart carries the real stuff but Canadian Walmart doesn’t. Can’t cross the border and I refuse to pay the extortionist Amazon.Ça prices...
Imagine that: there were riots in supermarkets because of a huge discount on Nutella, a few years ago. (try "émeutes Nutella" on youtube)
Anything tastes better than crisp bread or lutefisk.
The million dollar question: have they ever tried it or do they "not like it" because they were peer-pressured to have that preference?
My grandparents used to make their own beef hamburger from sirloin beef and trimmings because the junk in regular hamburger, even from an excellent Italian-American supermarket's butcher counter, was disgusting, to say the least.
Now if I could find a good source for bokkenpootjes, bitterkoekjes, weespermoppen or mosterdsoep, that would be a major step forward.
You can find giant jars of it in the Western African neighborhoods. I'm not even french and I also don't like it but my nephews will eat platefuls. And they are also French, the brown kind.
I actually never liked PB&J (peanut butter and jelly) sandwiches, only PB sandwiches. My grandmother would buy the pure kind that had to have the peanut oil stirred back in.
https://www.laurascudderspeanutbutter.com (that domain name is not long enough)
Many healthy and luxury grocery stores have coffee-type grinders for making your own fresh peanut butter directly from bulk peanuts.
I don't eat PB these days because it's a million calories, only a few unsalted roasted peanuts for a snack rarely. Some deserts have peanuts in them but not usually very much.
The other thing I make is to prepare two whole slices of French toast to make a French toast grilled cheese sandwich. 2-3 kinds of good cheeses and it's perfect brunch food.
An Italian friend said his mom would say "who puts peanuts on bread?", but she'd slather hazelnuts and chocolate (Nutella) on bread all day long. I think it's just what people get used to.
Fwiw it's available in every supermarket in Germany and for me it's a pantry staple.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...
https://www.globaltrademag.com/the-european-peanut-butter-ma...
They are eaten mostly by student, because its cheap, full of calories, and goes well with an evening at a bar drinking beers with other students.
At least that's what they are in Grenoble, which is a melting pot and has a very high number of students: I think there is about 70,000 students in the city (not including high school or below) for around 400,000 inhabitants. So any bar/pub where the beer is cheap is always full.
In Texas, there was a bar with unshelled spicy peanuts in an oak barrel where the peanut shells were thrown on the floor. I believe there are still bars and BBQ restaurants that do this.
Also, there is nothing wrong with peanut butter. It’s just not very common, in the same way as Roquefort might not be very common in the US. Nobody ever spends time not eating something just to feel superior, and French people are perfectly happy to copy foreign street food.
Roquefort is awesome. Interestingly, my late grandmother used to add it to salads all of the time. A little goes a looong ways, similar in a sense to blue cheese. Boursin-brand soft cheese is good with crackers and wine. Brie, of course, baked with butter and elephant garlic (partially oven-roasted by cutting the top of the head off a whole bulb and a tiny bit of butter/oil on top). If you're obsessed with garlic, the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California is everything bulb and it's been held for many years. In south San Jose, you can always tell when garlic harvesting is because of the smell in the air.
Another difficult one to find in the US is real Parmigiano Reggiano Stravecchio (not the imitations), which Trader Joe's has. Aldi Nord FTW.
If it weren't for cheese, I would be vegan. So like I'm half French, maybe I'm half vegan. Which half is a guess. ;-)
Speaking of street food: Alex of French Guy Cooking figuring out how to chop an onion as fast and as efficiently as possible; it's street-food-style, of course! https://youtu.be/LOqwl2KTzd4
FWIW, I love peanut butter and banana sandwiches, but it is not an habit I took in France. Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, I love some African dishes that use peanut butter. It’s just not traditional in French cuisine and a bit of an unusual taste.
> If it weren't for cheese, I would be vegan. So like I'm half French, maybe I'm half vegan. Which half is a guess. ;-)
You might just be vegetarian then. Someone said that “every man has two countries - his own and France”, so you are probably half-French ;) (Although often misattributed to Jefferson, it was actually from a more obscure playwright, Henri de Bornier).
In all seriousness, humans tend to like cheese in general.
BRB. Going to get passport, see you for dinner.
It doesn't have much in common with Mexican culture (nor French gastronomy) and is borderline cultural appropriation. If you want a taco-shaped kebab, rather try an Al Pastor.
> Pelonero had never been to Mexico, still hasn’t. “But I’ve watched a lot of series about tacos on Netflix,”
I guess he hasn't watched this one, or he wouldn't dare naming his things "tacos" :
https://www.netflix.com/title/81040704
And the "GigaTacos challenge" is just disgusting.
I miss my Mexican tacos...
Isn't that a gyro?
But they usually come with pita bread, while "French tacos" are wrapped in wheat tortillas instead, use any kind of meat(s), have cheese, sauces, ...
Coming from an American perspective, I'd say this is a good thing.
What y'all are seeing is exactly what we've been seeing (and what Europe as a whole - and the world as a whole - has been seeing for thousands of years): the proliferation of new cuisines. Calling them "tacos" is of course a bit of a sacrilege, but there's more than enough precedent for similarly-named food to have wildly different forms (see also: Spanish tortillas v. Mexican tortillas). And aside from that, this seems like your bog standard fusion cuisine - and given enough time, it'll have its own distinct identity, just like how Mexican food now has a distinct identity instead of being "merely" an amalgamation of Spanish and Aztec cuisines.
More broadly speaking, this is the same mechanism by which cultures proliferate and evolve into new cultures. Cuisine is one aspect of this, and here in the US at least it even helps drive that process; food is communication, and being the fatasses we are, we sure do a heck of a lot of it :)
One interesting aspect of these tacos is that they are essentially "laundering" the food of a minority treated with suspicion (North African / Arab immigrants) by disguising it as a different kind of exotic food. In the US, incentives might be the opposite: In some places, Mexicans might find success selling Burritos as "Döner Kebab".
I'm not sure I agree with this point, or even understand it actually.
There are plenty of fast-food joints selling "the food of a minority treated with suspicion". They're usually called "grec" (greek) for some reason, though they're what the non-French usually call a Kebab. The only "stigma" I can think of applied to those places is that it's "too fatty" / "not very healthy," etc[0]. There also are the "Lebanese" joints that sell wrapped sandwiches. Those are usually called "Lebanese", and don't have any stigma that I'm aware of either.
Also, the "tacos" I've had around Paris have absolutely nothing in common with the kebabs or event the Lebanese wraps. They're usually drenched in some liquid, sugar-laden sauce that makes eating them a pain and come in all kinds of... surprising combinations.
Usually a kebab is pretty straightforward. Some joints may get fancy with the sauce options; some joints are clearly very good while others are... less so; but you always know what kind of sandwich you'll get.
The taco places seem more like the salad bars that have popped up all over the place. You can pick and choose among a bunch of ingredients, and it's usually up to you if you want your combination to "make sense" or not.
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[0] The "health" related skepticism around French kebabs is about their fat content mostly. The "sanitary" skepticism also exists, but it's usually targeted at "Chinese" joints.
Also real tacos are "scalable" : Not really hungry? Get one or two. Really hungry? Get four or five.
(I call it regressive food because it is generally the type of food that your body craves after a stressor and generally bad for your health in the long term. Massive energy intakes and sedentary lives don't go well together)
I'm Mexican, and this is a new way of thinking about tacos for me. It's very true for street tacos, you pay by the taco, so you order exactly how many you want.
There are places where you ask for one, eat it, then ask for another, and so on until you're full. JIT tacos.
Do pancakes (Breton galettes and crêpes) count as street food ?
Breton galettes are meant to be eaten sitting with a bowl of cider, though, completely different beasts. You need a plate to eat a complète or a decent dessert crêpe.
reminds me of indian patties, a popular snack of meat or vegetables in a puff pastry shell, which through a similar loss-in-translation often get called "pattice" in the singular, "pattices" plural.
Eventually, he joined up with a pair of childhood friends to create O’Tacos, which now has two hundred and thirty locations in France. Pelonero had never been to Mexico, still hasn’t. “But I’ve watched a lot of series about tacos on Netflix,” he said, speaking from Dubai, where he currently lives.
"Usually halal". Yes, so it's as much stereotypical French food as a kebab then /s
Typical French street food is jambon-beurre (ham and butter sandwich, in a baguette) or in Brittany a galette saucisse (pork sausage in a galette, which is a savory type of crepe).
The word typical has the connotation of traditional, but it's hardly a stretch to call kebab a -- and possibly even the -- typical German street food. And it's usually halal!
Upon entering, say “Bonjour” - that will alert them that you a polite and also don’t speak French. Point to what you want that looks tasty as say “Un (Un)” for one “Deux (Duh)” for two and put a “Merci (Mer-si)” after each order. Pay and say “Merci Bien! (Mer-si Bee-en” at the end.
Presto, it will go smoothly and the proprietor will actually like you because you made an attempt. Don’t worry if the proprietor switches to darn-good-English - they’re happy you made the attempt and are just trying to hurry the order along so they can get to the next customer.
Not only do I want to try one, I think Taco Bell should immediately adopt it.
People who can't get over that it's called Tacos: chill out. Plus apparently it's always spelled with an s, whether it's singular or not. So it's not like anyone is going to mistake it for a Taco Al Pastor or whatever.
I’ve been living in France for the past 8 years and I first noticed the word “taco” about 4 years ago. My first thought was: “Sweet, Mexican food it’s making its debut in France!”...nope, it wasn’t anything like a the tacos I’m familiar with!
Tacos themselves are pretty interesting, and highly customizable. Want a taco with sausage and cordon bleu? You got it. Want to stuff it with more meat? How about donor kebab with a hamburger patty and nuggets? Your options are endless. Its standard to have fries inside them (with some sort of white sauce). I have had some that are quite tasty. But make no mistake, it’s pure junk food. I’d love to know why they call them “tacos”.
One thing I will note, kebabs are always open. I equate them to your typical Mexican joint you go to with your friends for a midnight snack. Seriously, I have never seen a kebab restaurant closed. You gotta be careful, though. There’s little to no health inspection at these places and I’ve heard some bad kebab stories.
That is either a taco, as the name suggests, or possibly sushi, but it's not, in any case, a sandwich.
EDIT: Actually, given the packet description from the article, its a calzone.
Jokes asides, if you get the chance to taste some French Tacos, the "Gratiné" option, if available, adds grilled cheese on top and that's amazing.
Until today, my fav is the "Indy" option from Hamamet in Lyon (Charpennes) , that comes with additional slices of goat cheese and black olives. The absolute best to ruin the benefits of the running you did just before.
It's tasty but not exactly a taco; it's more similar to the British sandwich called a chip butty than to a Mexican taco. Or if you really want to compare it to a Mexican dish, it'd be a large burrito.
I also like Banh Mi as an improvement over ham a cheese on a baguette.
Though for the rest, for an article written in an American publication, it's not too off-base (surely helped by how the author is living in France).
Can't believe there are no pics
Can you get that in the US?
You know, this kind of attitude is what makes people dislike Parisians.
Tossing "and from the ghettos" in there just lands him absurdly right in the middle of the shitty parisian that everyone hates.
I've never tried it myself, they look disgusting. I probably would have, if I was younger...
Ideally, I’d want a burrito machine that just spit out a perfect burrito without any human involvement (besides stocking it once a day or something). But cooking the meats seems like too much of an issue.
French tacos seems good because the meat can be cooked as it is Panini pressed.
> French tacos seems good because the meat can be cooked as it is Panini pressed.
I don't think I've ever seen a panini press capable of cooking raw meat inside of a panino without basically destroying everything else. Tacos is made with already cooked meat.