“Basically there was a misunderstanding in France of what is a taco”

When Mezaine Mennour brought out an order of tacos on Friday, from the kitchen at Dagdoug Coffee on Clanbrassil Street, it looked more like a burrito than a plate of tacos.

A big soft wrap, like a large flour tortilla, sprinkled with chopped cilantro, on a plate.

That’s because it was French tacos, which shares a name, but very little else, with Mexican tacos. It probably has more in common with a sloppy Foley, from Cork.

“I don’t know why they call it tacos, but that’s just what they call it,” said Sid Rabia, one of the founders of the restaurant French Tacos, in Cork.

“Basically there was a misunderstanding in France of what is a taco,” said Ismael Boucham, co-founder of Creme French, which sells such tacos, also in Cork.

Inside, French tacos will generally have chips, cheese sauce, and if you want, chicken or another type of meat.

This particular type, the merguez at Dagdoug in Dublin, had bits of that North African sausage, plus chopped olives, mixed in with the chips – and the sauce.

It’s not the most popular type of French tacos on the menu, though, says Mennour. That’d be the mixed one, with chicken and beef, he says.

“It’s very famous in France,” he says. “Students love it.”

From Lyon to Ireland

Boucham, of Creme French, says the French version of tacos was invented in Lyon in the early 2000s, pointing to an AJ+ documentary on its roots, although there are others.

“It was made maybe by a North African and then they added the cheese sauce, the French touch,” he says.

It’s always called tacos, even in the singular, Boucham says. And they don’t call it French tacos in France, he says, laughing – just tacos.

In France, 33 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds named tacos when asked what savoury snack product they prefer to eat when away from home, or by delivery, according to a March 2024 article in French newspaper Le Figaro, reporting the results of a study.

There are a bunch of chains selling them. Maybe the biggest is O’Tacos, a French company, which has more than 300 restaurants in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and beyond, according to its website.

Tashtik Arahaman, who lives in Dublin, first had a tacos in France on holiday in 2019, he said by phone Friday.

When he got back, he looked all over, and asked at kebab shops, but no luck. Why was he so keen to have another?

“It’s kind of like a wrap, kind of like a kebab, it’s just different – it’s really nice,” he said.

These days there are at least three places in Ireland to get them: Dagdoug Coffee (aka DZ Coffee), plus the two places in Cork: Creme French and French Tacos.

They all started selling French tacos at roughly the same time.

Rabia, of French Tacos, said they started about two years ago, selling from a food truck at a market in Limerick. “But we live in Cork so that was too far to go.”

So they opened a location in Cork city about a year ago, Rabia said. “People are tired of kebabs and the other classics, they want to try something new,” he said.

Boucham, of Creme French, said they’ve been open for about two years. And Mennour, of Dagdoug, says they’ve been selling French tacos for about a year and a half.

On the menu at Dagdoug are chicken, chicken goujon, beef, mixed, and merguez tacos, for €7 for a medium, and €9 for a large.

It was hot in the cafe at the corner of Clanbrassil Street on Friday at lunchtime, the windows open, sun streaming in. There was a football match on a big TV on the wall.

At one table, four older men sat together chatting over small cups of coffee. At another, a young man in a NASA jacket dug into a big French tacos, two-handed, looking pleased.