I lived in France for a long time, and tacos is my definitely favorite French food. You have to understand that the fantasy of food in France being all fancy shit is extremely wrong. In accord with the vast European street food tradition, the most French of French foods is a ham and butter sandwich on white bread with nothing else on it. And French people go nuts for stuff like that, because the other thing that France is exceptionally good at is saying "Get the fuck outta here. We're closed because it's 3pm and humans don't eat between 2pm and 6. Bye, good afternoon, see you later." So when you can get a meat, cheese, and french fries (on the inside!) burrito by a wrong-but-hilariously-adjacent name that's as big as your face for a few euros, it's a real blessing that instills one with great national pride.
Except for the "quatre-heures", of course -- a small snack enjoyed at 4PM. My grandmother would have a brioche, and I would have a croissant or something. If hungry, go inside a boulangerie and get yourself a baguette bien cuite (well cooked) -- nothing is as divine as that.
> the most French of French foods is a ham and butter sandwich on white bread with nothing else on it
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.
Eh, it's not. The US also has good bakeries, just not on every street corner. In Paris, walk 5 blocks and you'll pass at least one bakery and 37 pharmacies[1]. Cities in the US just aren't built that way.
[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.
Yep pharmacies are everywhere in FR just behind a corner (as well as immobiliers). I was in shock when I went to Amsterdam and after walking around for half an hour didn't come across any and had to look up on Google Maps.
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.
I don't know when they started exactly, but Wikipedia says that the founders of the O'Tacos chain started their first tacos restaurant in Grenoble in 2007.
While I agree with the 3-pm food in France sentiment. As a french person returning to France after 15 years away the "french tacos" seem like the most vile cultural mashup and taste made into a log of soggy fries and cheese sauce.
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.
well, currently most option for fancy food in France are closed because of Covid-19. Though having tried French tacos once, I think I'll still choose McDo/Burger King if I'm hungry and on the move at an odd hour
>I lived in France for a long time, and tacos is my definitely favorite French food. You have to understand that the fantasy of food in France being all fancy shit is extremely wrong. In accord with the vast European street food tradition,
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.
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 :)
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.
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)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
As a French person who's been lucky enough to visit Mexico and taste amazing tacos there, I just want to apologize to every Mexican for this. "French" "tacos" are closer to the cursed child of a burrito and a kebab than a taco.
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" :
> It doesn't have much in common with Mexican culture (nor French gastronomy) and is borderline cultural appropriation.
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 :)
My thoughts exactly! Have you seen what french kebabs are doing to Indian food now? You can get 'naan wraps'. Seriously, a cheese naan that's layered with mayo/lettuce and whatever meat you want inside. I don't mean to come off as a food snob, but what kebabs are doing now is pure bastardization of indian, french, moroccan, and greek gastronomy.
The result of food bastardization is often delicious. In Houston the M&M Grill is an Arabic and Mexican fusion restaurant. . . . We hope you'll stop by soon to try our Hamburgers, Kabobs, Enchiladas or Chimichangas.
Sorry, in France, we usually just say "kebab" rather than "döner kebab" / "gyro" (so if you go to Turkey and ask for a kebab expecting a gyro, you'll be surprised the first time).
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, ...
A few years ago, I saw my first "Original French Tacos" place in Valence, France, and thought it was a hilarious concept (A restaurant in France, with English signage, advertising a Mexican dish and claiming it as French). But I learned a lot from this article.
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".
> 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.
---
[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.
As someone who has tried tacos in Mexico and what we call Tacos in France, I find the latter to be an insult to the former. One offers a burst of flavors while the other is just "regressive" food in the sense where it's mostly unsavory carbs and low quality meat that have the gross taste of any of the industrial sweet sauce that it contains. Mexico is good at street food, France just isn't.
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)
> real tacos are "scalable" : Not really hungry? Get one or two. Really hungry? Get four or five.
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.
Yeah, another thing I loved about the better carnitas places in Mexico City is you can pick your exact cut of meat. I forget the name of the place but my favorite was near where I was staying in Condesa. It's been in some movies and stuff over the years. No seating at all. You just stand around holding your plate and getting JIT tacos lol. Very convenient to just grab a bite on the way somewhere quick.
The crêpes eaten as street food have nothing Breton about them. But yes, that counts as street food. Waffles as well.
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.
> 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.”
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.
By the standards of The New Yorker, this was mercifully short. Usually they go on and on about the childhood experiences of the main subject's parents, both biological and adopted. Sometimes it feels as if the writers are paid by the word, with no upper limit. Some people treasure this "long-form" writing, but not everyone does.
>Technically, the French tacos is a sandwich: a flour tortilla, slathered with condiments, piled with meat (usually halal)
"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).
All I want in France is a steady mainline IV of pain au chocolat warmed-up so the chocolate is just melting without making the croissantness soggy or oily from the butter melting.
I doubt anybody claims that it's the most traditional snack in France, but how many portions of galette saucisse are sold vs French tacos? I have no idea, but I'm sure in Germany doner kebab is sold more often than the more hereditary Bratwurst (in terms of street food).
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!
You have plenty of nice places to eat cheap and good in France, better than those "French tacos" places. Just go to a decent boulangerie, you'll find good sandwiches, quiches or other things for a few euros, healthier and with decent ingredients :)
If you don’t speak French and are introverted, a boulangerie can seem intimidating. Here’s how to go for it:
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.
Showing a modicum of effort gets you far abroad. The Japanese gave me full marks for effort when I spoke to them in my very rusty Japanese language I'd mainly acquired by university classes and college-age weeabooism. Getting drunk and proactively looking up unfamiliar words/phrases in Aedict helped matters -- and I think I'd learned more Japanese in those two weeks than I did in three semesters of college. I can confirm: swallowing your introversion, just for a bit, and engaging the locals in their local tongue, pays dividends, regardless of how shitty you think your skill in the language is.
I read that article and I thought it sounded absolutely delicious. All those customization options, some of the cheese sauces sound incredible. And putting fries inside a sandwich has been proven a good idea by our English friends already.
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 don’t know how I feel about calling tacos “French”. I mean, yah you can only find them in France, but the dish itself is anything but French. Kebab joints have them and their cuisine is typically halal. I’m not sure how/when kebabs grew in popularity here in France, but they are everywhere now!
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.
I lived in Lyon (France) for a long time, where the french tacos is born.
Mister Tacos is one of the famous place to try it.
I don't know why people get mad about it, because guys, trust me it's only fat, french fries with sugar .
You can mix 4 kind of meat, 4 kind of sauces in one piece of tortilla full of french fries.
I'm so sad because Lyon is one of the most important french city for gastronomy
Had to look up what these French Tacos look like, for those that live in SF, and especially lived or worked in SoMa, these look just like the Zapatos at Garaje!
It's actually a burrito. I guess _some_ might call a burrito a sandwich, but only if they've never had a burrito before. It's weird that the article uses the word sandwich at all because it really doesn't communicate the right idea at all.
The best french tacos are served at a place in the upper upper west side NYC called "Bombay Frankies." They have the best Americanized french-mex rotirolls. Can't be beat. http://bombayfrankie.com/
It is really funny to see so many people disagreeing in the comments over the suitability of this meal. Are you sure you're not talking about spaces and tabs?
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.
For reference, a typical French taco involves french fries, chopped up chicken cordon bleu, and a melted white cheese sauce, all wrapped in bread that's more like pita bread than a tortilla.
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.
This is awesome, they look like the grilled cheese burrito.
French fries inside the burrito is definitely an improvement to rice. First time I ever had one was in Los Angeles. I wonder if the French are into guacamole and sour cream.
I also like Banh Mi as an improvement over ham a cheese on a baguette.
Are "California burrito"s only a thing in California? They're quite common there and are exactly this. Since moving to southern Oregon I've only found one place with it on the menu and they don't get the details quite right.
Just to balance the article, I'm french, living in Paris, working near Champs Elysées and never heard about tacos. It seems to be very specific to teenagers or ghettos.
And here I am a world traveler at 40 loving French tacos. I guess perspective is everything. Maybe one just has to break out of their protective shell and not be a snob about "lower class" things.
Rent has been insane for a long time relative to median income in practically every major city across the world. I actually don't think that the rent in Paris is any worse than in Boston, and Paris is nicer to live in.
Move back 15 years, replace tacos with kebabs and whoop, it's still the same. A few older dudes who know the right places to go to, and the chef salade-tomates-oignons-chef-ing mostly young people.
Tossing "and from the ghettos" in there just lands him absurdly right in the middle of the shitty parisian that everyone hates.
Which is quite ironic, because to locals the Champs Élysées is known to be a hang-out place for banlieusards, a place where companies have flashy flagship stores, and clueless tourists who do not expect either of those things. If there is a place to have O'Tacos restaurants in Paris, the Champs are far from the worst place.
Hardly a surprise because it's cheap street food for the lower classes as french Kebab is which they are really just a variation of, meat, fries and industrial sweet sauce that is. The Champs are not really the kind of place where those classes live. Ghetto food seems a bit strong though, you can easily find them outside the rich neighborhoods of the West which suggests me you might find instructive to get out of some time.
These sound great. I’m trying to find the first good good that can be made automatically in a machine the size of a coke vending machine. This seems like a good candidate.
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.
I think you would need to pre-cook and freeze the meat in individual servings beforehand (in glass jars) When an order is placed the meat gets microwaved in the jar, then emptied out onto the tortilla and the jar is stored by the machine for collection and reuse.
I have heard that there are burrito vending machines at Warsaw Polytechnic University.
You select the ingredients, the machine wraps it and delivers- in a soft drink dispensing sized machine. Not sure if the burrito is heated, prior to delivery.
Just add bags of char to the machine and sprinkle some in during assembly.
> 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.
