What exactly are French tacos?
It’s a question Mehdi Mahfouf gets a lot. He runs French Street Tacos & Crepes with his brother Yannis – their food truck, parked up in Kogarah, has specialised in this dish since its February launch.
Mahfouf grew up in Nimes in the south of France, where he recalls summers spent under the 2000-year-old Roman arches of its famous Pont du Gard aqueduct. It’s here, as a teen, he savoured French tacos.
“In every city in France, you can eat them,” he says. Despite their name, they don’t have any connection to the floppy, hand-sized Mexican staple. Instead, they’re much (much!) larger and more burrito-like. They emerged in the suburbs of Lyon in the early 2000s, most likely pioneered by locals with North African heritage. Entrepreneur Patrick Pelonero helped popularise the dish through his O’Tacos chain, which now has more than 400 restaurants worldwide (including two in New Caledonia) and is famous for its Gigataco challenge: a 2.5-kilogram monster filled with cheese, fries and five kinds of meat that’s free if you demolish it within two hours.
O’Tacos was born in 2007, the same year the iPhone was introduced to the world – which is apt, as the rise of French tacos can be compared to the smartphone’s dominance. “One day it wasn’t there, and the next day it was, and nobody knows how they lived without it,” Pelonero told the New Yorker.
There’s a sizeable French community in Sydney that misses it, Mahfouf believes – which is why he opened French Street Tacos & Crepes. When Broadsheet turns up on a rainy autumn night, French Street Tacos & Crepes is full of diners and delivery drivers at its spot just by the Princes Highway, near a Kogarah used car dealership.
The team takes orders and fills tortillas with various meats (chicken, minced beef, sujuk) or vegetarian patties. The French tacos bulge further with the addition of chips, condiments (the creamy harissa-based Algerian sauce is a signature move, as is the four-cheese sauce) and extras like caramelised onion and jalapeno chillies. Then the tortilla is folded and wedged into the sandwich press. There’s also the gratineé option, where various cheeses (cheddar, mozzarella, Swiss and raclette) are melted on top; or the mega-loaded gratineé experience, where halal meats (turkey bacon and beef rashers) are stacked on too.
Jumbo French tacos are on offer, but even a regular one is pretty massive. It’s understandable why the economical five-euro hunger-buster took off in France. These giant carb cushions will likely do well here, particularly amid the current cost-of-living pressures.
As per the food truck’s name, there are ingredient-stacked savoury crepes (imagine a burger crossed with a pancake and you’re close), but the tacos are the best-sellers. Feedback has been promising, particularly via diners from the brothers’ birthplace. “They say it’s even better than in France,” Mahfouf says.
Sydney has experienced this dish before: if you walked along Newtown’s King Street in 2019, you might remember French Tacos Factory, which lasted a year. Perhaps its presence was too early, and French tacos are finally about to have their Aussie moment.
Sellamis opened in Melbourne last October, offering cheesy French tacos until 2am. And Mahfouf points to “the McDonald’s of French tacos” launching recently in Melbourne: Chamas Tacos, which just unveiled its South Bank location.
“French tacos are actually everywhere. You can even find them in Japan, Bali, the US, Vietnam, everywhere,” he says. Now Sydney has a chance to try them again.
French Street Tacos & Crepes
8 Princes Highway, Kogarah
Hours:
Tue to Sun 5.30pm–midnight
@frenchsttacoscrepes
Dining and Cooking