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!
We first stopped at the 
is the second largest in the Americas. This was a highly advanced civilization with a system to bring in fresh water and remove sewage from the city. They installed drains throughout the area (something the Europeans didn't figure out for a long time!). These ruins have mostly been reconstructed (the stones are original but had been covered over the years with dirt, trees, etc. There are still large numbers of undiscovered temples... they expect that every hill in this area is actually a temple. 
and down the pyramids, 
we headed into DF itself. We went right downtown to the zocalo (this word means pedastal and the story goes that one of the rulers (current era) was planning on installing some large statue, but he was deposed and all he had finished was te pedastal. Over time, people began to call the plaza 'zocalo' and now you can find zocalos all over mexico, they're always the main plaza). Anyway, we were dropped off in the most enormous plaza and walked over to 
(although there is clearly much more as the Spanish built right on top of the Aztec city, however, these are also beautiful historical buildings, and as Oscar put it, 'we're a mix of the two cultures and we need to find a way to preserve both'). The Templo Mayor is celebrating its 30 aniversary (hmmm... just like someone else I know!) and there are great new signs and other information. 
