In the small historic town of Le Mans, France, you’ll find a few big tourist attractions: Circuit de la Sarthe, an 8.5-mile racetrack; a picturesque cathedral in town; museums; tons of old French architecture; and one very modern, very scenic Kentucky Fried Chicken, which overlooks the track during the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans.
If you’re well-versed in motorsports or American chain restaurants (or both), you might know of this KFC. The restaurant stays open during the race and offers a view of the track, and it’s so famous that iRacing, a virtual motorsports simulator, has a full rebuild of the location overlooking its digital reproduction of the track. I called my husband from France and asked him to drive by it on our sim at home, and he sent me an array of photos.
The Le Mans KFC has been a bucket-list item for me. I tried to stop by at 4 a.m. during my first trip to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023, but the layout inside the massive track is so zig-zaggy and confusing that on my trek there, I had to shimmy through breaks in several chainlink fences to keep moving in the direction of the restaurant. The online hours for the restaurant don’t seem to update to reflect changes for Le Mans weekend, so it’s impossible to know whether it’s open unless you go.
Screenshot: iRacing
This year, the KFC phone was disconnected when I called to ask if they were open. I think it was disconnected in 2023, too. As the night went on during my KFC excursion three years ago, I began asking French locals if the restaurant stayed open that late. When one told me no, I gave up. I was lost by that point, so I ended up doing karaoke with a drunk guy in his underwear. When he realized how exposed he was, he excused himself to go put on a bear onesie.
This was my first year back at Le Mans since that fateful 4 a.m. KFC trip. I’ve thought about my failure ever since: What if the restaurant was open? What if I was one loose chainlink fence away from reaching enlightenment? What if I’d pushed through my confusion and kept going?
I decided I wouldn’t have those regrets this year. I’d walk to KFC in the daytime, ideally weaving through Le Mans’ mazes of infield fencing without breaking and entering into several campgrounds. I’d get there, and if the restaurant was closed, I’d know it wasn’t meant to be. I wouldn’t leave it on the table again.
[Ed note: I made a documentary about Le Mans that will probably never be seen publicly, but I’ll never forget one of the drivers asking why he kept smelling fried chicken in a certain section of the track. As the night went on, the chicken seemed to drive him insane. Eventually, the owner of the team, out of a mix of amusement and pity, sent someone to get chicken for the driver so he’d be satiated after a multi-hour stint behind the wheel.
While the team didn’t win the race, all the team got free KFC, which is its own sort of victory if you don’t think about it too hard – MH]
Wait, Is This My First Time Eating KFC?
I attended Le Mans with Genesis Magma Racing, and they booked our group a bunch of glamping tents for an overnight stay at the circuit. My roommate was Instagram car and motorsport personality Elly Wong, whom I’d met on one other occasion. We both dragged ourselves into the tent, exhausted, around 5 a.m. local time, and we both magically woke up around 9:20. Elly asked my plans for the day, and I told her KFC. She asked to tag along. I said yes, because I couldn’t believe someone actually wanted to help me seek out American fast food in the French countryside.
Now is a great time to tell you that I’ve never been to KFC. I grew up in America, a 10-minute drive from a local KFC, and I can’t remember ever eating there. I seldom eat fast food, and KFC has never been on that rare rotation. I realized this while walking to the Le Mans location, and I decided it was funnier to eat KFC for the first time while overlooking a prestigious French car race.
Elly and I walked in the general direction of KFC for about 35 minutes, snaking through all the bizarrely angled fences and pedestrian bridges that make Le Mans impossible to navigate. I loaded a map to KFC on my phone and kept pointing in a general direction away from the paddock, saying: “That way!”
We eventually ran into a forest, and I asked a traffic worker if KFC was nearby. They said to take the forest path and we’d pop out at the restaurant on the other side.
When we got there, KFC was packed. It’s two floors high, and both the bottom floor and outdoor deck were full of people. Elly and I walked upstairs and saw an empty dining room with a perfect view of the track, but the restaurant had roped it off.
An employee came upstairs, and I used Google Translate to ask if we could sit in the abandoned dining room. They said it was for members of some club — the Founders Club, maybe? — and I asked how to join. They didn’t have an answer. Eventually, they told me I could go up there for 30 euros. I pulled out my credit card, and they said: “Cash only.”
That was when I realized I almost got an under-the-table KFC viewing experience, but I had no cash. Thwarted again.
Elly and I decided to watch on the deck outside. We ordered at a kiosk, selecting things that either felt decidedly American (bacon cheese fries, chicken tenders, fried macaroni-and-cheese balls) or decidedly not (a giant bottle of sugar-free Orangina, a tiny bottle of liquid yogurt, a Nutella donut).
The fries, chicken tenders, and mac-and-cheese balls represented a phenomenon you only think about when eating American fast food in Europe (which most people will tell you not to do, because that’s “uncultured”): Cooking an American fast-food food menu in a European manner feels less … greasy? Sluggish? Heart-attack adjacent?
I’ve never had American KFC, but compared to what I imagine, the fries felt less drenched in goo. The breading on the chicken tenders was lighter. The mac-and-cheese balls were mediocre and not super cheesy, but they were mediocre in the way a Pringle is mediocre: The flavors are so muted that you might as well eat more to get the full experience. The Nutella donut was on par with anything else featuring Nutella: fantastically sugary.
The whole meal tasted less salty and heavy than I imagined it would in America. I left feeling fine to walk back to the paddock, not like I needed a nap from all the horrors I’d ingested.
The liquids from the meal were more concerning. Elly got a soda, which came with no lid, straw, or ice. (Every time we asked for ice at the hospitality building in Le Mans, we got one cube.) The sugar-free Oragina tasted like carbonated medicine. The tiny bottle of liquid yogurt came out of the kitchen warm, and by the time it’d sat in the sun for five minutes, it was hot. Hot yogurt is not good.
But Elly and I raved about KFC the whole walk back to the paddock. It’s a goofy thing to do, walking an hour round-trip through a forest in Europe for American fast food when you have a whole spread of things to eat at your fancy trackside hospitality. But it’s also worth it to do goofy things.
If we spend our lives taking ourselves and our environments too seriously, we’ll never let loose and do the truly childish activities that call to us. We’ll never get to perch outside a French KFC and watch the 24 Hours of Le Mans, bacon-cheese fries and Nutella donuts in hand.
After doing exactly that, I’m reminded that a life without childish excursions is not a life I want to live. I’ll just leave the hot yogurt off the itinerary next time.
Top graphic images: KFC; Apple; Ateliers Ruby; Alanis King