One of the kids’ favourite places in the city of Mataró is the Xurrería, which absolutely does not offer tourists an authentical churros experience. It’s simply the real thing, as evidenced by the fact that is was closed for holidays during the second half of our stay, something no tourist oriented business would do at the height of the season. That’s something to say about the city in general: tourism is a factor, and a welcome factor, but it’s not a big enough factor for businesses, especially bars and restaurants to rely on it exclusively. This means they need to provide a service that makes regular customers come back. I understand that I’m the worlds biggest hypocrite here when I want to go for a holiday but not where there are too many tourists, but I can live with that. It means good food.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Here you see “porras”, a thicker variety of churros with my “cortado”, an espresso with a bit of milk. Traditionally you eat them with “chocolate” as in the next picture:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
These are the more commonly known churros with their typical shape. The chocolate is thick and dark and not overly sweet, so you can dip your churros in and enjoy the whole thing. It’s more like custard in that respect, only that it’s delicious.
Yum! I keep thinking I’d like to try making churros as I don’t know of anywhere I could buy them locally and they do sound rather good, what with the friedness and the not too sweet thing. But then the frying in lots of oil thing puts me off, it’s not that I can’t do it rather that it’s a style of cooking I am very happy to leave to others for various reasons. But the best festival breakfast I have had was freshly cooked cinnamon doughnuts with lots of coffee, so I waver again.
Oh and I hope you are feeling little better today.
Now I get why the Spanish tourists a few years ago were having fun at the staff entrance of Stockmann department store. There was a small sign C-porras (or A or B, maybe D). Porras in Finnish means a step in stairs or staircase (in the latter case it’s short for porraskäytävä, literally stair or step corridor).