El Moro and the Magic Churro

You should immediately stop what you're doing, board a plane to Mexico City, and head on down to the Churreria El Moro and get yourself a cup of Chocolate Espanyol and 4 churros con canela (basically a cup of melted chocolate and churros covered in cinnamon). You will never view dessert (or even breakfast) the same again.

Kimberly, her mom, and I were hanging out in the Historical Center of Mexico City when we were approached by some Mexican students who wanted to interview us for their english class. After some questions from them, we decided to ask them where to go eat. One of the kids (who, judging from his portly size, has eaten a churro or two in his lifetime) first asked us if we wanted Chinese food. After a laugh on our part, and a quick explanation that we were hoping for something more Mexican in nature, he told us about El Moro. I'm glad we didn't go for Chinese.

Short, middle-aged Mexican waitresses, dressed in mint-green outfits straight from the 60's, buzz around this diner-like, 24-hour a day, beehive of activity. All they serve is churros. Solo for 6 pesos. Or with chocolate, coffee, or milk for about 30-40 pesos. I think that's it.

It was packed every time we went there. And in the 10 days I was in Mexico, 5 of which were in Mexico City, I visited El Moro 4 times. Almost 5 times, but I expressed some self restraint, which is strange for me.

So what is a churro? It's fried dough, dropped from a star-shaped extruder straight into hot oil, then removed, sprinkled with sugar and/or cinnamon, and dropped directly in front of you. I preferred mine dipped into hot chocolate.

[Chocolate will be covered in more detail in a later post. I look forward to that one almost as much as this one]

I had a churro once in Portland, and I was not excited. It was cold and kind of soggy. I was not excited about going to the churreria in Mexico City. As often is the case, I was wrong.

The churros at El Moro were hot and crispy on the outside, and warm and soft on the inside. The first time we went, we had 2 each; the next 2 times, we had at least 4 each (the sugar coma I went into after the first 3 makes the experience a little hazy); the last time I think we held ourselves to only 3 each.

And if you really go all that way just for a churro, you should probably stay a little longer and check out some of the Azten and Mayan ruins. We'll cover those things in later posts, but for now we're concentrating on the important stuff: food.

Surprise, you're eating a churro!