Churro 101 츄러스 – Better Than A Boyfriend

The storefront of Churro 101 @ 313 Somerset

Churro 101 is a famous Korean churros chain with many outlets in Korea. They have this attention grabbing tagline ‘better than a boyfriend‘ – yes, we’re serious. They have finally opened their first international outlet at Bugis+ in Singapore on 12 October 2015, with their second store at 313 Somerset on 20 November 2015. If you want to try the awesome churros from Churro 101, we recommend heading down to the 313 Somerset branch as it is generally less crowded than their Bugis+ branch. Yes, their Bugis+ branch has monstrous queues depending on the time of day.

What are churros? They are a variation of the Chinese yóu tiáo (油条) that was brought by the Portuguese to Europe many centuries ago. The Portuguese were not able to master the dough ‘pulling’ required for the preparation of the traditional yóu tiáo as the Chinese Emperor at the time had made it a capital crime to share such knowledge with foreigners. The churro dough is therefore squeezed out through a star-shaped contraption instead.

The modern churros is deep fried and rolled in sugar and/or cinnamon after being infused with delicious stuffings such as chocolate and cheese. They are commonly found in Spain, France, Portugual, the United States and the Philippines.

Service and Ordering

The two hot sellers at Churro 101 are their Chocolate Custard Churro @ S$4.50 and their Dark Chocolate Strawberry Crunches Churro @ S$5.90. They make all their churros to order so you can expect a short wait for them even if there is no queue. On the plus side you will have delicious piping hot and super crispy churros.

Their gorgeous churros display

Churro 101 – Chocolate Custard Churro

Do not be fooled by the ‘custard’ tag here, what you will get is liquid chocolate infused in the deep fried churros. This churros is rolled around in cinnamon sugar, so we suggest avoiding this if you are averse to cinnamon. This is a quick delicious treat and you can imagine the taste with your regular yóu tiáo with a chocolate centre, albeit sans the fluffy dough centre. We rate the Chocolate Custard Churro 3.8/5.

Dark Chocolate Almond Churro

This is the choice for those who don’t want cinnamon in their churros. The entire churros is coated with dark chocolate and almond nuts, and yes, it tastes as good as it looks. This is a good choice for chocolate lovers and we rate it 4/5. We will recommend the Dark Chocolate Strawberry Crunches Churro instead for those that don’t mind strawberry.

Final Thoughts

Bringing in delicious treats from foreign lands is always a good thing, and we must encourage our food entrepreneurs to do more of this. That said we think there was a reason that the Chinese Emperor did not allow the yóu tiáo secret to be passed to the Europeans, and we are extremely biased towards the traditional yóu tiáo. The churros with its chocolate and cinnamon sugar cannot match up to the delicious fluffy centre of a plain yóu tiáo at 20% of the price.

However, this is still a must-try and who knows, you may find it better than a boyfriend and fall in love with it.