French tacos
fast food recipe created in France

A French tacos (US: , UK: ; French: tacos français, [takos fʁɑ̃sɛ], or commonly tacos), Lyonese tacos (French: tacos lyonnais) or matelas (French for "mattress"), is a fast food dish which usually consists of a flour tortilla grilled and folded around a filling of French fries, cheese, and meat, among other deli ingredients.
Description
Despite the name, French tacos has little to do with the taco and is more similar to a burrito or quesadilla. French tacos has also been compared to the panini and the shawarma sandwich, and is similar to the California burrito.
The tacos consists of a flour tortilla wrapped or folded in a rectangular shape around a filling which usually includes:
some type of meat, such as chicken, turkey or beef, in the form of mince, escalopes, chicken nuggets, shawarma, cordon bleu, or turkey lardons;
Belgian fries;
cheese, which may be Emmental, some other type of French cheese, Cheddar, or processed cheese (like The Laughing Cow's Toastinette or meltable American cheese), or a cheese sauce;
an additional sauce or relish, which is generally any of white döner kebab sauce, Algérienne sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, harissa, barbecue sauce, or other sauces usually available in kebab shops;
vegetables, generally in the form of salad mix, but also in other forms such as shakshouka.
It is then served warm by grilling (with the use of a panini grill) or toasting.
Many different recipes exist and it is common for French tacos restaurants to deliver made-to-order products by letting customers choose à la carte from the aforementioned ingredients. Meat-free variants also exist.
Most French tacos made in France are marketed as halal-certified and as such do not contain pork, in order to accommodate Muslim customers.
A newsletter of Vaulx-en-Velin described it as "In short, a rather successful marriage between panini, kebab, and burrito".
History
There are conflicting accounts about the exact origin of French tacos.
The public source identifies “French tacos” as fast food recipe created in France. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around French, tacos and fast.
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This entry incorporates text from “French tacos” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.