Fast Food Items You Can Only Find In France

The 280, named for its full weight in grams, has gone through various limited-time recipes and variations over the years in France — including versions topped with egg or bacon, or slathered in sauce au poivre. All versions however include a stone-fired ciabatta bun, a thick ground beef (called "steak haché" literally "minced steak" in French) patty, and two slices of tomato. The 280 Original, currently a permanent fixture on McDonald's France's "Best of" menu, includes two pairs of adorning condiments and cheeses. American-style squares of cheddar and Emmental cheese sandwich the patty and melt under its heat, and standard McDonald's ketchup is paired with a "lightly citrusy" sauce taken from the French version of the McChicken.

The 280 may seem like a fairly typical burger all put together, but it's a distinctly European creation; its ciabatta bun harkens back to the creation of the Italian bread in 1982 as a substitute for popular French baguettes. Meanwhile, it's been paired with seemingly every distinctly French sauce under the sun, from a savory Béarnaise to a buttery sauce aux herbes de Provence.

Macarons (not to be confused with macaroons) are a quintessentially French dessert. The miniature sandwich-like cookies made from egg whites and almonds come in a kaleidoscopic array of colors and flavors, and, in 2007, McDonald's "McCafe"-branded coffee shops in the Paris area began offering macarons Mickey D's-style. McDonald's has been offering their version of macarons since 2007, but their availability and variety have been limited to select international markets, and many flavors like caramel — a popular macaron variant — have been dropped from French locations over time.

French McDonald's locations still offer "Le Duo de Macarons," a pairing that seems to be leveraging McDonald's American identity by rolling with "brownie" and "cranberry" as the two consistent flavors. Reception has been mixed, as the writers at Budget Travel note; the soft, meringue-like makeup of a macaron gives it a shorter shelf-life than is optimal for a fast food giant's production schedule, so naturally the "McMacarons" have a different chemical makeup than macarons that meet French pâtisserie standards. Budget Travel excoriated McDonald's macarons in contrast to those sold at the bakery of legendary French pastry chef Pierre Hermé. In contrast, however, the writers at Delishably ranked the McDo cookies against those from Ladurée, the pastry giant where the "double-decker" sandwich-style macaron was invented, and still ruled that McDonald's provided an enjoyable, budget macaron option.

Subway's foray into the breakfast sandwich world was tumultuous at best. Starting in 2010 with sandwiches, wraps, and flatbreads that were well-received – but put such a strain on operations that the chain retreated from the breakfast game only a few years after it first dipped its toes in. Subway's French operations, however, have benefitted from the nation's robust baking industry — and has held onto a simplified breakfast menu featuring the "Formule DUO" and "Formule TRIO:" one hot drink or espresso, an optional orange juice, and your choice of viennoiserie, or "Vienna-style" pastry. Yeah, those fluffy, flaky croissants and pains au chocolat so beloved in France and associated with French identity? Those are Austrian imports.

Off the breakfast menu, French Subway locations also offer a trio of mini beignets, with either an apple-cinnamon or a Nutella-style chocolate hazelnut filling. If you're imagining New Orleans-style fried fritters with a crispy exterior, think again. French beignets are lighter, fluffier, and chewier than the Cajun-style descendants found in the States.

If we're going to take Paul Fedèle at his word, that Burger King's appeal to French diners lies in its "American-ness", then the Master Bacon Grill provides a fascinating example of the contrast in French and American dining sensibilities. Taking its unique ingredients all together, the Master Bacon Grill looks like the kind of upscale sixteen-dollar burger that would appear at an American mid-budget steakhouse, not anywhere with a drive-thru. Brioche, the sweet butter-and-egg bread makes up the bun of the Master Bacon Grill burger, an herb-laden sauce dresses it, the patty sits under a slice of Emmental, a cheese with highly-specific criteria needed to qualify for the name, and the lettuce of choice is arugula, the leafy green that notoriously got a pre-presidency Barack Obama painted as a hoity-toity elitist (that's what we get for not calling it "rocket" like the English).

How does the Master Bacon Grill score to French burger lovers? Alleghri, a French Youtuber specializing in fast food reviews, sampled the Master Bacon Grill in 2022, and he quoted French rapper OrelSan to celebrate the burger as "simple, basic!"

If you've ever encountered the "It's not X unless it's from the X region of France" meme, you've been exposed to the concept of controlled appellation, the means by which a product is only allowed a regional name if it has been certified to come from the given region — and has been made with approved traditional ingredients and techniques. The wine world is probably more famous for the seriousness of its appellations, but cheeses are equally protected in France by the French government, and by the European Union's own geographical indications register. The Master Cantal includes two slices of Cantal cheese with an EU-backed "AOP" label. The semi-firm cheese named after its region of origin is one of the oldest made in France and is famous for being one of the popular cheese options for aligot, the whipped mashed potato dish you've probably seen stretched to dizzying heights.

Add this pedigreed cheese to a burger with a brioche bun, an old-fashioned-style mustard sauce with whole seeds in it, and both caramelized and crispy onions, and you've got an incredibly flavorful and decadent meal to brag about once you return from your next French excursion. Just be careful! It comes and goes from the menu.

Welcome to the real land of milk and honey. Pizza chèvre miel is a popular recipe in France with complicated origins. Despite its French ingredients with contrasting sweet and tart flavors, chevre and crème fraîche alongside the honey, the pizza scholars at Guide.Pizza trace this pizza variation to neighboring Spain. Domino's version uses a low-fat crème fraîche, but this hasn't earned it above a D on the World Health Organization's Nutri-Score meter featured on the pizza's product page, but that's the trade-off for a decadent marriage of sweet and salty, dairy-heavy flavors that French fast food influencers raved about when Domino's launched the chèvre-miel in 2021.

The positive reception for the Domino's chèvre miel may owe a lot to the fact that pizza chèvre miel is so ubiquitous and beloved in France that it's genuinely hard to mess it up for a French pizza lover. The French fast food reviewer on the Youtube channel LeRequin92 mistakenly called the pizza a rarity and was quickly corrected by his fans commenting that they'd never seen a pizzeria in France that didn't serve a chèvre miel. Nevertheless, Domino's has earned an enthusiastic passing grade on the flavor front from French foodies.

From the turducken to the donut-bunned burger, the United States is the reigning champion of wild and intense mashups of favorite flavors, providing the culinary equivalent of a Girl Talk album. But Domino's French division is coming for the crown with a pizza topped with kebab fries. It may sound like a step too far, but it's easy to see the lineage and sense behind Domino's concoction. Topping fries with pizza fixings is a common way to upgrade them as a delicious party appetizer, flavor-mashing styles of topped fries like carne asada fries show the appeal and power of grilled meat with your potatoes, and since the creation of chili cheese fries, cheese has been an effective way to glue potatoes and toppings together.

Kebabs and other foods from North African and Middle Eastern immigrant communities are beloved by millions of French people, and a contested culture war bête noire among French nativists. With mozzarella and tomato sauce, bell peppers, kebab meat, fries, and a drizzling of a white kebab sauce familiar to fans of the Halal Guys, the Cheeky Pizza Kebab is a mélange of France's favorite imported dishes from over the Alps in Italy or across the Mediterranean in the Maghreb.

Popeyes opened its first French locations in 2023, with plans to expand to over 300 Louisiana-style chicken restaurants over the next seven years. With France already showing some appreciation for fast food with a Cajun twist thanks to the popularity of the Burger King Louisiane Chicken Steakhouse, Popeyes has been taking a proactive approach to adapting its menu to French tastes, such as by ditching traditional American cheddar cheese for French cantal on all its sandwiches. Despite these adjustments, so far the Popeyes French menu is starkly similar to its American counterpart, save one standout difference: All the coffee.

Popeyes in the States caters to Americans' love of iced drinks, and the familiar pairing of a cold soft drink with hot and spicy, summer barbecue-evoking fried chicken. Meanwhile, in the UK, the chicken chain has added sweetened and creamy cappuccinos and lattes to its beverages roster. But only in France can you order your spicy wings and fries with three different styles of espresso – single, double, and a café allongé (the French term for the Italian lungo). Our friends at TastingTable assert that you should absolutely try a café noisette – well, now you can with a side of Cajun fries.