Churros Con Chocolate appears as a signature dish in 1 Spain cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Churros con chocolate · Madrid
Churros con chocolate is Madrid's morning and after-midnight order: long ridged dough sticks fried golden and dunked into a thick hot chocolate, often eaten at 03:00 on the way home from a night out.
Churros may have originated with Spanish shepherds high in the sierras, who fried dough in animal fat over wood fires. The Madrid tradition centres on Chocolateria San Gines (1894), the 24-hour churreria off Calle Mayor where Lorca, Hemingway and Picasso took their post-cabaret breakfast at 03:00. The dough is a simple flour-and-water choux piped through a star-tip nozzle into bubbling oil at 190C, fried in batches for 90 seconds. The hot chocolate is thick (whisked with cornstarch) and served in heated cups for dunking. The Madrid order: 6 churros and a chocolate (4.30 euros at San Gines in 2026), eaten standing at the marble counter.
Where to eat in Madrid:
- Chocolateria San Gines
- La Mallorquina
- Cafe de Oriente