Churros

The best churrería in Sevilla (I’m assured, though asserting the best churrería in Sevilla must be like claiming the best pizza joint in New York) is a small white-tiled hole in the wall, like all churrerías, in one of the byzantine districts in the old city west of the cathedral: literally, a counter open onto the street with a little tiled alcove behind it, a painted icon of a Virgen, a steel produce scale,  confectioner’s sugar in a shaker, chocolate, dough rolled out on a smaller floured counter in back, a deep frier. Two women in white coats. Small as a shoebox.

The dough is fried in big looped spirals which the woman pinches off with her fingers into shorter curved sections, still hot & oily, onto sheets of butcher’s paper, which are folded, weighed out, & sold by the half-kilo. I take mine with sugar.

This photograph was taken in Sevilla about a month ago, on the rooftop of an apartment a block or two away. (I’m back in Sevilla next weekend for féria; the stone façade furthest away from the shot is part of the cathedral.) Note the American-style coffee in the mugs, which is not exactly a luxury, except in the sense that anything rare & formerly familiar is a luxury, and the glare, because the film I’ve been using is not proof against the sunlight here, and I need to figure out what to do about it.

_

Other breakfasts.