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Annals of Gastronomy
April 19, 2021 Issue

The Unlikely Rise of the French Tacos

How an upstart fast food became essential dining in the home of haute
cuisine.

By Lauren Collins

April 12, 2021

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French tacos
The French tacos is an "identitarian food" for the country's
adolescents.Illustration by Cari Vander Yacht

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French tacos are tacos like chicken fingers are fingers. Which is to
say, they are not tacos at all. First of all, through some
mistranslation or misapprehension of its Mexican namesake, the French
tacos is always plural, even when there's only one, pronounced with a
voiced "S." Technically, the French tacos is a sandwich: a flour
tortilla, slathered with condiments, piled with meat (usually halal)
and other things (usually French fries), doused in cheese sauce,
folded into a rectangular packet, and then toasted on a grill. "In
short, a rather successful marriage between panini, kebab, and
burrito," according to the municipal newsletter of Vaulx-en-Velin, a
suburb of Lyon in which the French tacos may or may not have been
born.

In the American imagination, French cuisine can seem a static
entity--the inevitable and unchanging expression of a culture as
codified by Careme and Escoffier and interpreted by Julia Child. Boeuf
bourguignon, quiche Lorraine, onion soup, chocolate mousse. Although
these dishes remain standbys, alongside pizza and couscous and other
adopted staples, French cuisine can be as fickle as any. The latest
rage has nothing to do with aspics or emulsions. What are French
people eating right now? The answer is as likely to be French tacos
as anything else.

Published in the print edition of the April 19, 2021, issue, with the
headline "French Twist."
[collins-la]
Lauren Collins has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008.
She is the author of "When in French: Love in a Second Language."
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