El Churro: New York City's Latest Money Laundering Scheme?

Discover with us whether the infamous "El Churro" on Houston Street is a money laundering front or a modernized churro shop.

On a lively corner in lower Manhattan lives a churro shop like no other. While New York is not unfamiliar with building facelifts, this locale finds a way to stick out like a sore thumb. The sterile, narrow, white-walled building more closely resembles a botox clinic in Los Angeles than a food business in New York City. Bearing semblance to a leach stuck on an unsuspecting host, this white box awkwardly lives off the side of a recently renovated apartment building on one of lower Manhattan’s busiest streets. The rapid rise and fall of food businesses leads to never-ending content trying to capture the current food zeitgeist. El Churro has fallen prey to the New York City rumor mill, aka countless creators on TikTok, and they have a theory about this place: it’s a money laundering front.

While Los Pollos Hermanos, one of many money laundering fronts in the show, resided solely in the fictional universe of Breaking Bad, the apt comparisons are there. Spanish name? Yep. Food business? You know it. Managed by a Giancarlo Esposito lookalike? Well, that is a bit of a stretch but it would be a hilarious coincidence if true. It is one thing to create a chain of fried chicken joints in the Southwest United States to cover up your vast undercover drug production and distribution operation, but historically people will turn a blind eye to good chicken. However, in an obnoxious food city like New York City, millions of judgy eyes will peer into your place of business in an attempt to figure out what your deal is. As a pair of those judgy eyes, it was only fair to make the great trek to Manhattan to conduct some research about this possible front for the largest northeastern drug operating ring since the Giuliani days.

An early birthday celebration forced me out of the confines of my Brooklyn apartment to a bar in the Lower East Side on a fateful Saturday night. The millennial DJ ripped his out-of-style Juul while playing a mix of unknown indie-alternative before the cute girls he wanted to get attention from asked him to play better music to dance to. The over-priced cocktails nearly dispelled my true goal of the night: El Churro espionage. Tequilla sodas and Miller High Lifes fueled the urge for the group to venture to the most important stop of the night.

Entering the joint, the order-taker yelled at the folks behind us to not let the throw-up-adorned young adult in because no one wants to deal with that shit. Having traversed the NYU freshman puke that served as a welcome mat to El Churro, nothing could stop us from sussing this place out. The food menu is fairly direct, while the drinks menu is surprisingly vast. You choose how many churros you’d like and pair it with a wide range of assorted dipping sauces, we went with the classic dulce de leche and less classic Irish cream. While the dulce was incredibly hard, both were absolutely delicious. The churros were fried fresh and ready mere seconds after we ordered. We joyously munched on our churros on one of the sterile white tables in the back.

Late-night churros - Irish Cream on the left, Dulce de Leche on the right

I am kind of disappointed to report that El Churro is most likely not a money laundering front. Nothing screamed money-laundering drug operation about this place. Frankly, it was a totally enjoyable late-night treat. The churros were not on the same level as their Disneyland counterpart but nonetheless were quite good. Besides the out-of-place aesthetic and weird array of pre-packaged beverages, El Churro is a seemingly sweet treat destination that so happens to share a design style with pyramid scheme makeup companies that are in your hometown mall.