Wrap
Built in a line, not a stack: filling down the centre of a soft tortilla, rolled tight by tension and cut on the bias. A 1990s American take on the burrito, now a French chiller fixture.
France
Wrap Poulet
The chain-boulangerie chicken wrap: a soft wheat tortilla sealed at the seam, around a band of cold roast chicken, lettuce, tomato, and herbed mayonnaise.
Wrap César
A whole Caesar salad, romaine and chicken and parmesan and croutons, tossed in its own garlicky dressing and rolled tight in a tortilla. The 1924 Tijuana salad with one new part: the wrapper.
Welsh Rarebit à la Française
The French reading of British rarebit: melted cheese, beer, and Dijon emulsified into a smooth pourable sauce, poured over toast and blistered under the broiler. Eaten hot, with a knife and fork.
Tourton Garni
A sealed dough pillow dropped into hot oil and eaten standing off the pan, the Champsaur tourton crisps gold over potato or stewed prune. Old feast-day food, fried to order at the Gap market.
Toast Apéritif
A crisp round of pain de mie or baguette under a teaspoon of tapenade, rillettes or herbed chèvre, the French apéro toast, finished in one or two bites.
Tartine Parisienne
A half-baguette split open, buttered to the edge, draped with folded jambon de Paris and eaten with a fork: the tartine parisienne is the jambon-beurre with its lid taken off, all of it on show.
Tartine Nutella
One open slice, a brown layer thick enough to hold the knife's drag-marks, no butter under it because the spread carries its own fat. The lazy default of the four o'clock gouter, eaten fast.
Tartine Gratinée
An open slice of country bread heaped with melting cheese and run under a broiler until the top blisters and lacquers. The single slice is a plate for the flame, best in the minute it lands.
Tartine Chocolat
A torn length of baguette with a bar of dark chocolate pushed into the crumb: the tartine chocolat may be the original pain au chocolat, the four o'clock goûter the pastry later took its name from.
Tartine au Miel
A slice of baguette under a pour of honey, eaten at a French breakfast: the plainest sweet tartine, and the one built entirely around a topping that will not stay where you put it.
Tartine au Fromage
A slice of country bread under cool cheese, the cheese course handed a piece of bread: spread a fresh goat's round to the edges or lay an aged wedge in slabs, eaten at the apéro hour, never melted.
Socca Sandwich
A hot wedge of Nice's chickpea socca, folded over anchovy, onion, or tapenade while it still bends. Blistered rim, creamy middle, black pepper, and a minute to eat it.
Sandwich Welsh
The Lille brasserie's beer-and-cheddar melt, usually served open, built here as a closed sandwich: ham under a broiled rarebit sauce, a second toast as the cap, eaten hot with cutlery.
Sandwich Waterzooi
A loose Ghent cream braise, sieved to the instant it coats rather than soaks, slid warm into pain de campagne: poached chicken or river fish, leek, the yolk-and-cream liaison just clinging.
Sandwich Ventrèche
A cured belly wound into a tube and sliced into orange-rimmed spirals, the piment d'Espelette rim the southwest's mark on every coin. Half a baguette and a stack of them, little else.
Sandwich Vendéen
Sandwich Vendéen: the standing Vendée plate of dry-cured eau-de-vie-marinated jambon de Vendée and the small white mogette bean compressed into a baguette or brioche.
Sandwich Valençay
Valençay sandwich: a hand-ladled truncated-pyramid raw-goat cheese from the Berry, ash-coated and sliced down its flat faces, AOP since 1998.
Sandwich Œuf-Mimosa
A French egg sandwich named for the yellow mimosa flower: cooked white folded with mayonnaise, the yolk sieved into a pollen-fine crumb on top.
Sandwich Œuf-Mayonnaise
The chopped-and-folded egg salad sandwich of the Paris bistro counter, sharpened with Dijon and defended by ASOM, the society founded by Claude Lebey in 1990 to keep it on menus.
Sandwich Œuf Dur
Sandwich Oeuf Dur: the plain sliced hard-boiled egg on a buttered baguette, laid as visible rounds rather than bound, the unmodified base form of the French boulangerie egg sandwich.