Thanks to globalisation, fast-food in France is pretty much indistinguishable from elsewhere in the world. Walking down the high street in any big town, you'll most likely find McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Subway and Pizza Hut, alongside the more traditional baguette shops and ubiquitous kebab shops. There is one relatively new fast-food fad that is 100% "Made in France" though ... #FrenchTacos ! Just in Dunkirk town centre, there are about five different taco restaurants, including the one we tried - O'Tacos. I'm a big fan of Mexican food so I was very excited about giving it a go. It turns out that it has nothing to do with Mexican-style tacos though.
The basic component of a French taco is a big flour tortilla. They also automatically contain a portion of chips and a melted cheese sauce. The rest is up to you though. Depending on the size you go for, you can choose one, two, three or four types of meat - I use the term meat loosely as the options include chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, chicken fillet, minced beef and spicy merguez sausage. The next stage is choosing the sauce, with over a dozen options, from the simple ketchup or mayonnaise to chipotle, samourai, BBQ, chilli or curry sauce. If you're a pig extremely hungry, you can also add extras such as cheese, salami or mushrooms.
The whole lot gets wrapped up in the tortilla then warmed through in a panini press. The end result is very easy to eat on the go but I do find them very sickly with all that cheese sauce covering everything. Everyone under the age of 25 seems absolutely obsessed with them though and there are huge queues at lunchtime during the week when all the students and schoolkids take advantage of the student deal, but weirdly, it's deserted at the weekends. They even have a "free if you can finish it" Gigataco which weighs a whopping 2kg, contains five meat choices and is the size of the tray. This happens on a Thursday night, only the first four contenders are served and you have from 7-10.30pm to get through it. Just the thought of it gives me a belly ache !
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These tacos look delicious. I'll definitely be trying those if I'm ever in Dunkirk
ReplyDeleteThe Tacos look and sound lovely.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I want to try this local speciality. :) I suppose the idea is similar to a chip butty.
ReplyDeleteThey're not as bad as I expected but there's too much cheese sauce and I wish they had more meat choices that weren't processed meat - the tweens and teens go wild for them though !
DeleteLove tacos however these look a different to the ones I normally make. However they look large and filling!
ReplyDelete