The Best Churro In San Francisco
*If you don’t to read a long story fraught with intrigue, despair, and the Bay Area, then skip ahead to after the ‘…’ *
On a Tuesday in South Bay, I finish up a Magic, the Gathering draft at Facebook classic campus, and rush on my bike to catch the 9:21 Caltrain from Menlo Park station. On the way there, I cross the 101 on a pedestrian overpass. I’m not paying much attention. One thing leads to another, and I flip my bike over on the downward slope of the concrete. I land on my hands.
Luck would have it that I bought a bunch of bougie bike equipment literally two days ago. My nice new MIPS helmet does its job, and I maintain consciousness as my head cracks on the pavement. I get up quickly and in pain. I still have a train to catch. I limp, or the biking equivalent of limping, to the platform with time to spare. Both my right index finger and the entirety of my left hand and forearm are very ouch. I’m covered in road rash. People are looking at me like a madman and I’m sure I look it.
Now, I’ve never broken a bone before. I have no idea what it feels like. My brother is in med school and my father is a doctor, but they both live on the east coast and are well asleep at this point. I wrack my brain for any medical people I know in the Pacific timezone. Aha! I call my eldest’s best friend, Peter. He picks up from a brewery and pulls a Chris Traeger.
He may be a bit tipsy, but Peter can still talk a distraught snake person through a minor medical crisis remotely. He tells me since my head’s alright I don’t need to go to the emergency room right away. This is a relief, since I have work in the morning (yeah right). A nice man on the train gives me a bottle of water to help clean the blood off myself, and I sit there looking dazed for the hour ride back to 4th street station. Still dazed, I bike-limp the 25 minutes home and promptly buy a six pack of Coors Light and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Idrown my sorrows until sleep takes me.
You are most likely wondering what any of this has to do with churros. I’m getting there. First I have to visit the emergency room and find out that I only broke a small part of my right index finger. No pointing or finger guns for me.
A week and some change later, I found myself in the office of the San Francisco Hand Center, in Opera Plaza at 601 Van Ness Avenue. I broke the distal joint of my finger vertically somehow and the surgeon tells me it is “literally a textbook case of when you need hand surgery.” Lovely. Not only that, but I’ll probably “permanently lose some range of motion.” Splendid. Also I won’t be able to use that hand for two weeks. Amazing.
I’m pretty down in the dumps leaving the office. This is gonna cost a lot of hard earned dough and keep me from working for almost a month. Nothing is really capable of cheering me up at this point.
…
Or that’s what I thought as I went to grab lunch. All of the events leading up to this were worth it because of what my mouth was to experience. I’d gladly sacrifice mobility in my finger 10,000 times in order to taste the sweet ambrosia that is a Cool Cravings churro.
The experience starts before cinnamon touches tongue. The proprietor’s wife makes every pastry fresh on the weekends with her bare hands, love, and a dash of what I can only assume is cocaine. He is warm, inviting, and funny. They had churros the first time I visited, but in future visits he fried them fresh for me (the only thing better than a Cool Cravings churro is a fresh fried cool cravings churro). For the amount of effort and care that goes into making these heavenly things, they only charge $2 a pop. I’m serious when I say they could easily charge $5. If they dribble some chocolate sauce on it and put it on a too-large white plate we might even get into the double digits. But no, Cool Cravings doesn’t have a big head, just big flavor.
The first bite of a Cool Cravings churro is a textural menagerie. The crust is crisp, immaculate. It resists your closing jaw, teasing you to the edge before yielding to the crunch. The crunch, oh the crunch. I dream about the crunch. This is where most churros go wrong, they are either overcooked into dry soulless sticks, or undercooked and fold immediately under pressure like feeble clouds. Not here. The outer crust gives way to a luscious, pillowy internal body. The consistency is reminiscent of firm quiche, something with the soul of an egg behind it. It is substantial but not so much so as to feel heavy. Underneath it all lies the sweet, sweet custard. A coup de grace, thick sweetness wraps up our journey from tough exterior to fluid, inviting core.
The flavor throughout is just as varied. The crust smells and tastes of cinnamon and sugar. The body is sweet but not overly so, again with a faint reminiscence of pastry egg. The custard is a vanilla soul, balancing the stronger flavors and textures of the whole with a mellow and relaxed finish.
Every time I come back to the Hand Center I get a churro. They are my green light, my muse to chase through the painful haze of a broken body. Their crunch supplants that of my crushed bone. Their softness the pillow on which I rest sore limbs. Their sweet sweat the counter to bitter disability. I look forward to my hand appointments now, because I know there is a churro on the other end.
Do yourself a favor. Go get the churro.
