The Decadent Costco Meal You Can Only Find In France

Many grocery stores offer prepared meals and sides, easily heated up in the oven or microwave at home, and Costco is no different. While Costco's international offerings in the food court frequently impress, such as the Asia-only bulgogi bake, so do the take-and-bake options.

If there's one region of the world that can attempt to claim it has the best cuisine full-stop, it's France, with French Costcos offering a smorgasbord of regional delights. As one Redditor illustrated with photos from a Costco run in France, you can find croque monsieurs with cheese ready to be melted, or you can grab the decadent Savoy specialty tartiflette. (And of course, the cheese section looks epic.)

Tartiflette is a perfect dish to buy in a disposable ready-to-heat container too, because it can be messy and difficult to clean. It's mostly just a massive amount of semi-soft cheese baked on top of a potato, onion, and bacon mixture. It's also a steal at 15 to 20 euro based on weight, since you'd need to spend about the same, if not more, on just the bacon and cheese to make it yourself.

Since we aren't in France, we likely can't find tartiflette pre-made at a local grocery store and will need to make it ourselves if we want to experience the deliciousness. A tartiflette recipe uses a bacon and onion mixture — you can use either regular sliced bacon cut into small pieces, or bacon lardons. The bacon and onions are deglazed with dry white wine before being combined with sliced, cooked potatoes, topped with crème fraîche and baked in the oven — but not before the Reblochon cheese goes on.

Tartiflette is finished with entire wheels of Reblochon de Savoie cheese placed on top before baking — you can cut them length-wise or into half moons. Reblochon is a semi-soft, washed rind cow's milk cheese that's incredibly creamy. Some say the recipe for tartiflette was invented in the '80s as a marketing ploy by Reblochon cheese. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned Reblochon (among many other cheeses) because it isn't made with pasteurized milk. Thankfully, there are similar enough cheeses you can use instead, such as Brie, Camembert, and Comté. Whatever cheese you decide, try to let your tartiflette cool before digging in — the smell is mouth-watering.