Will French tacos be the next big thing? They should be
My friend Namratha has an idea: She wants to start a chain of French taco restaurants in the United States.
Namratha, who recently found herself out of a job, is young. Like many young people, she is full of big ideas. One of the biggest is NP’s Tacos Français.
French tacos are all the rage in France, she says. She spent nine months in that country, returning here only a few months ago. With all of France’s many charms — including a boyfriend whose name I don’t know, so I like to think of him as Jean-Pierre — the thing that stuck with her the most are French tacos.
You wouldn’t think French tacos are a thing. She assures me that they are. She assures me that French taco chains are found all over France, like so many wedges of comte cheese and bottles of superb, inexpensive red wine.
She also assures me that French tacos are neither French, or at least not culinarily rench, nor are they tacos.
A French taco is more like a wrap. The inside is based on any sort of meat you want. Chicken seems to be especially popular, including chicken cordon bleu, but you can also get ground beef, doner kebab or lamb sausage. Namratha has a friend who uses tandoori chicken at his French taco restaurants.
One chain, with the unlikely name of O’Tacos, offers falafel.
Also inside the wrap are french fries, rather like Pittsburgh’s famous Primanti Brothers’ sandwich. I don’t happen to like Pittsburgh’s famous Primanti Brothers’ sandwich, because the french fries diminish the taste of the rest of the sandwich and make it bland and mushy.
Namratha assures me I would love a French taco. Maybe the doner kebab, lamb sausage or tandoori chicken would be flavorful enough to cut through the french fries. Or maybe it would all come together because of the sauce.
The secret of the French taco’s success is what is called Algerian sauce. Like French tacos being neither French nor tacos, Algerian sauce is not Algerian. It was invented in Belgium, and it is based on that most French and Belgian of ingredients, mayonnaise.
But the mayo is mixed with harissa, the brightly flavorful and hot chili paste used universally throughout northwestern Africa, including Algeria. The sauce also includes tomato paste, vinegar, sugar, mustard and cumin. Namratha says the cumin is essential.
Heinz makes bottles of Algerian sauce, but it appears to be only available in France and other countries that serve French tacos.
O’Tacos also offers eight other sauces, including barbecue, curry, Thai chili, mayonnaise and ketchup. But why eat those when you can have sauce Algérienne?
Some people add other ingredients to their French tacos, such as cabbage or pickled vegetables or lettuce, but Namratha is a purist. She wants her French tacos to be filled with meat, fries and sauce. Nothing else.
The outside of the wrap is a flour tortilla, which is folded like a burrito. It is then flattened and grilled in a panini press.
If you want, you can get a choice of cheese melted on top — that’s on top of the wrap itself, not on top of the ingredients inside the wrap. Any cheese that melts easily will do. O’Tacos offers cheddar, gouda, Emmental, mozzarella and, of course, raclette.
It all sounds yummy and gooey and wonderfully satisfying, perfect for a late-night snack or a morning pick-me-up, but also great all day long. It’s like the French version of a slinger. Namratha even says she wants to include a slinger French taco at her restaurants.
At the moment, NP’s Tacos Français is just a pipe dream (or as the French would say, a “ pipe“ dream). But if she ever gets around to opening it, I’ll be first in line. I think I’ll try the slinger.
