France's new fast-food trend may soon spread across Europe: the crousty. The dish combines crispy fried chicken, white rice, and a creamy sweet-and-sour sauce, all packed into a tray.
It's cheap, heavy, and ultra-filling: around 800g of food for just €9. In the last few months, it has become particularly popular among students and low-wage workers, with long queues regularly forming outside restaurants.
The chain most associated with the trend is “Tasty Crousty”. With an aesthetic inspired by synthwave visuals and the Grand Theft Auto video game, it targets a younger audience with an aggressive social media presence. In just two years, Tasty Crousty has opened 60 restaurants, claiming to sell more than 1 million crousty trays per month.
But several other chains, including Krousty Sabaïdi (which claims to have invented the dish), sell their own versions. Fast-food giants Burger King and KFC have also added crousty-inspired items to their menus.
The trend is spreading to other French-speaking markets like Belgium, Switzerland, Algeria, and Canada. Tasty Crousty said it will expand abroad, including into the UK.
The crousty craze reflects broader changes in eating habits: chicken is becoming the most popular fast-food meat across Europe. According to Le Monde, 186 fast-food chicken restaurants opened in Paris in 2025 alone. Ten years ago, there were only 25. In the UK, chicken shops are increasingly supplanting fish-and-chips takeaways.
Chicken is cheaper than beef, relatively high in protein, and generally perceived as healthier. Unlike pork or beef, there are fewer religious dietary restrictions on chicken.
Not everyone is happy about this new trend. In April, the centre-left mayor of a suburb north of Paris used every means possible to block a fast-food chicken restaurant from opening, arguing that he wanted to fight “junk food” and preserve the neighbourhood's quality of life.
It quickly turned political. Left-wing figures accused him of promoting gentrification and showing contempt for young people from working-class neighbourhoods with immigrant backgrounds, where this type of food is very popular. Meanwhile, right-wing commentators welcomed the move, framing the popularity of the chicken chain (almost always halal) as another sign of the decline of traditional French culture.
The restaurant has finally won its case against the mayor, and will continue to sell chicken tenders a few hundred metres away from the town hall.