For the second installment of our donut crawl, we traveled to Madrid, Spain. While Spain did have donuts – Dunkin’ Donuts has locations in and around Madrid under the name Dunkin’ Coffee, and McDonalds and Burger King both offer donuts as part of their menus – Sonia and I opted to go with a more local and traditional form of fried dough – the churro.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints and a bit of jet lag, we only made 2 of our stops. Our first stop on our trail of churros was Chocolateria Valor.
Before we get into the churros, I want to note that Chocolateria Valor are the brick and mortar chocolate shops for the Valor company, which is one of Spain’s premier chocolate makers. You may step into the shop looking for churros and chocolate, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself distracted by the other desserts and sweets they have to offer. If my eyes could eat, I think I would have been in trouble.
Sticking to our game plan though, we each had an order of the traditional hot chocolate with an order of churros.
The portion size ended up being 4 churros with a small cup of chocolate. This actually ended up being more than we were planning to eat, so depending on how hungry you are, 1 order of each can easily be shared by 2 people. That being said, Sonia and I had no problem finishing the 2 orders.
First, let’s cover the chocolate. We were surprised by how thick the chocolate was. For us, this was more a dipping chocolate, so we weren’t sure about drinking it once we finished our churros. Sonia tried and just couldn’t finish it as drink because of how thick it was. The highlight for us with the chocolate though was the flavor. This cup isn’t simply a cup of chocolate but rather it was chocolate with a subtle hint of added spices. This wasn’t even one of their gourmet chocolate drinks, but it did come across as one.
Now let’s move on to the churros. The first things we noticed was that the churros weren’t textured or sugared, and then we noticed that they seemed to be cut pieces from something larger. I guess we were expecting something more in line with the churros you get from Disney or Costco, but these are definitely different.
For us, the churros had were soft and eggy. There wasn’t anything to note about the flavor of the churro itself, which is why the chocolate played a big role in the flavor for us. Our biggest issue with the churros though was that they were very greasy. By the end of the meal, both our hands were covered in grease, and we both used a good amount of napkins to wipe some of it off from our hands while we were eating. To be fair though, I did wonder if the greasiness was more a factor because of how busy the place was at the time we were there. They were continuously making churros and setting them to drain, but because of the volume and turnover at this time, I’m wondering if they were going from oil to plate too quickly.
Chocolateria Valor has multiple locations. The one we visited is at Calle del Postigo de San Martín, 7, 28013.
Our next stop was Chocolateria San Gines, which is probably the most well-known churro spot in Madrid.
Again we had the churros with a cup of chocolate, but this time, we opted to split the order, which came with 6 churros. For us, the churros here had a texture more in line with what we thought of as a churro. Like the one at Valor, the inside was nice and fluffy but overall, the churro here was a little firmer and less greasy. Also, the churro had a bit of saltiness to it.
As for the chocolate, San Gines wasn’t as thick as the one at Valor, but it was more drinkable. While it didn’t have any added spice flavor, it did have a nice sweetness to it. We also noted that as the chocolate sat, it did begin to thicken.
Chocolateria San Gines is located at San Gines passage 5 in Madrid.
