So, I just had a Currywurst.
What is a Currywurst? Glad you asked.
It's a simple fried pork sausage, seasoned with ketchup and curry powder, although you can recognise a good Currywurst stall by the fact that they have a special home-made curry sauce. Currywurst is usually sliced into small pieces, although there are some very rare exceptions to that rule. I will address these later, but today, I had a normal, sliced one. Many places in Germany claim to be the home of Currywurst, but if you just stop to look at what some people do to the poor sausages, you'll realise that the only true Currywurst is from Berlin- where it was also invented. To be more precise, it was invented in the borough of Charlottenburg (although the best Currywurst is from Steglitz, but more about that later). Seriously, in Bochum, they use Bratwurst! How disgusting can you get?
Although you typically have a breadroll with it, it's also no sin to eat them with chips- which is what makes the Currywurst a very fine example of globalisation. You have a typical German pork sausage, seasoned with an Indian spice (sometimes, it's additionally seasoned with capsicum powder, which is from the Americas), an Indonesian sauce made of an American vegetables, and sometimes eaten with, again, American vegetables cooked in a Belgian manner. That's five countries in five minutes!
Anyway, now that I made you hungry, where can you get the best Currywurst? As I mentioned, you can only get it in Berlin. Any other place in Germany selling it is imitating it. Sometimes, admittedly, fairly well, but usually quite hideously. Don't
ever eat Currywurst in Bavaria, for instance.
I need to specify it even more, though. Some travel guides tell you that the best Currywurst can be found in a certain take-out in Prenzlauer Berg called Konnopke's. That's bullshit. I ate that Currywurst, and it was really just a pretty bad sausage with curry, nothing more. I don't want to become bigoted or anything, but there is no such thing as a good Currywurst in East Berlin. It was invented and brought to perfection in West Berlin. As mentioned earlier, it was invented in Charlottenburg, but the best is from Steglitz, which is a little to the south of that. The best take-outs are the one in Schloßstraße underneath the Autobahn bridge, and mostly Krasselt's, in Steglitzer Damm. This one also does not slice Currywurst, but just cuts them in half and lets you eat them on sticks. It's the best damn food in the world.
And just for the record, the Currywurst I had today was from Maximilian, Karl-Marx-Straße in Berlin-Neukölln.
A typical dish of Currywurst.
Krasselt's Currywurst, 24 Steglitzer Damm, 12169 Berlin.
Anyway, keep an eye on the Drunk Thread, I've got a feeling there will be a new post by your's truly there later on.
