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Comment by titoasty | Hacker News Reader

YMMV very vastly, and it's only my experience, but here is my opinion on this food (I'm french).

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 :)

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They sound absolutely horrid. I'll try almost anything once, but freeganing in a Whole Foods' dumpster sounds better.

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?

Oh they are! Tacos is their name, brick is their taste. Be proud of mexican-american tacos, they are the real deal.

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.

Or Speculoos!

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...

the President's Choice stores seem to carry the good stuff!! :)

Haven’t found the Lotus/Biscoff stuff there. Everything else isn’t the same!

Nearly every store around here in the US caries Nutella. Costco has enormous multipacks: 1890 g for 11.30 € (167 g / €).

That’s interesting - those are all sweet. Most peanut butters (except natural) are slightly sweetened, but are often used as the savory counterpart to jams, jellies, and/or honey. I’ve (an American) only ever had Nutella on whitebread or added into a dessert.

Yes those are all sweet. And it goes with the french(continental) breakfast which is awfully saturated in sugar (for kids mostly): chocolate milk, bread with jam/Nutella, orange juice, viennoiseries, even biscuits. Same for the "goûter", 4pm meal for kids. A lot of sugar...

Imagine that: there were riots in supermarkets because of a huge discount on Nutella, a few years ago. (try "émeutes Nutella" on youtube)

That's just a normal American Black Friday at Walmart minus the guns and boxing fights.

Nutella is great chocolate, hazelnut, and palm oil, but peanut butter (peanuts) has its own umami that adds something other than desert. Peanuts in pad thai, for example. How can you have Reese's Peanut Butter Cups without peanut butter? Blasphemy! Or Snickers, the vaguely almost food, emergency post-workout energy bar? Don't even touch my Peanut M&M's unless you want to lose a hand or an arm.

Anything tastes better than crisp bread or lutefisk.

My girlfriend is French and she, along with her family, despise peanut butter. It makes me laugh! They say its 'too fat', and they don't like the taste. To each their own I guess.

Try to compare it with Nutella, just to see where it's going ;) I hope your couch is comfortable.

It's just not commonly part of the French diet, and since it's got a very pronounced flavor it makes for really unusual combinations to a French palate. Like most things, it's an acquired taste. (I'm French and peanut butter is okay with me.)

That was my impression of its perception, but it seems like arbitrary, tribal elitism not shared by everyone.

The million dollar question: have they ever tried it or do they "not like it" because they were peer-pressured to have that preference?

I suspect a decent amount of the European disdain for peanut butter comes from the majority of it being god-awful here, with decent quantities of sugar, palm oil, and salt added in. Until recently it was very difficult to find "pure" peanut butter (at least in Spain and Portugal).

We just make our own, it's cheaper and no added crap.

Yeap. In the US, there's been commercial of natural kinds and grocery store PB peanut grinders for decades. Could grind it at home too.

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.

Right, but if your only exposure to the stuff has been the super market crap, why would you think to make your own?

Peanut butter is nice. Sadly, it's not easy to get peanut better in the UK anymore now that they have left EU. Can't bring the peanut butter back from NL.

You have plenty of peanut butter, e.g. Whole Earth brand at Waitrose, and it’s quite a bit better than Calvé pindakaas IMO.

Now if I could find a good source for bokkenpootjes, bitterkoekjes, weespermoppen or mosterdsoep, that would be a major step forward.

> What's up with French disdain for peanut butter? Is it just something else to feel artificially-superior about?

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.

Ah cool. They know what's good. :-)

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.

I’m not a fan of PB&J, but drizzle maple syrup on toast and cover in Sun-Pat and it’s irresistible.

Oooh! French toast (pain perdu) with real maple syrup is good too.

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.

Can’t have mafé without peanut butter, ergo peanut butter is essential.

French tacos are only "tacos" in their name; the two foodstuff have basically nothing in common.

"French" fries

I don't think it is just the French. I have Polish friends that aren't into it either. I think most of Europe isn't really into peanut butter.

Funny; I have a Polish friend who lives in France and LOVES peanut butter. When she travels to the US she always maxes out her luggage weight with peanut butter on the return trip. I'm sure there are outliers everywhere.

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.

In France and Germany the per capita consumption is about 1 kg, in the US it's about 4 pounds. So twice as much. Not as big a difference as I'd have expected going by this thread. If the sources and my interpretation of them are correct, anyway.

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...

You probably are not the target audience, and neither are the readers of the newyorker.

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.

Peanuts and beer is almost as good as pizza and beer.

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.

You get peanut butter, Dakatine brand, and it’s actually quite good, not overly oily or sweetened, just honest roasted and ground peanuts. It’s mostly bought by African immigrants, however, not locals.

Real peanut butter with just peanuts has lots of peanut oil and needs it to flow better. So if it's only peanuts, is it very dry and difficult to take out and spread?

Yes. I’m sure they add some oil, but it’s considerably thicker than US peanut butter, which is what I like about it.

They have nothing to do with what you would call “tacos” in the US.

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.

I must've heard an out-of-character, anecdotal individual French person scoffing at PB who doesn't speak for everyone, or they were being sarcastically-ironic. I also recall a French acquaintance in Mountain View laughing at PB. I like food from every country, there's always something good. Maybe like there are always different kinds of people anywhere, there are those with narrow minds and cool ones who will try almost everything.

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

> I must've heard an out-of-character, anecdotal individual French person scoffing at PB who doesn't speak for everyone, or they were being sarcastically-ironic. I also recall a French acquaintance in Mountain View laughing at PB. I like food from every country, there's always something good. Maybe like there are always different kinds of people anywhere, there are those with narrow minds and cool ones who will try almost everything.

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.

I mean if you're in Lyon you should just eat pied de porc and quenelles 24/7.

You're a man of culture. This is the way now.

I feel strongly also about eating cassoulet 24/7 in the south. It makes one feel like they are sitting next to a tavern fireplace in a fantasy novel about to go on an epic adventure.

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!

The trick is to find the ones with chackchouka (cooked tomatoes, onions and bell peppers) and take them without fries, they're way better this way. Tacos World in Lyon is usually pretty decent this way, although it's still just street food.

>And if you really like this kind of food, please try the best burrito of Lyon from Taco Taco. Das good sht

BRB. Going to get passport, see you for dinner.

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