Food chronicles: Currywurst

Heading back to Berlin for today's culinary adventure: currywurst.  It's true, it looks even less attractive than the Wiener schnitzel did in my last food post.  But this is really a popular thing, almost a cult phenomenon, with a Deutsches Currywurst Museum in Berlin, and a novel, movie, and song about currywurst.

This photo is actually a variation, curry buletten (pronounced boo-LET-un), because T doesn't really like currywurst.  Buletten are like meatballs, but slightly flattened, almost like small, really thick burgers.  But it's practically the same thing, just different meat underneath, so I'm going to focus on the more popular variety.

So what is it?  Well, 'wurst' is sausage, so it's sausage cut into slices and topped with curry powder and ketchup-like spiced sauce.  That's it?  That's it.  So simple!  With a little tiny plastic fork stuck in on top.  Served with fries, which are commonly eaten with mayo as well as ketchup.  There are currywurst stands all over the city - small snack shops (called Imbiss) or even trailers with a counter, maybe a standing table or two, and you buy your currywurst and stand at the counter and eat it.  This was a staple of T's youth (though of course he opted for buletten, not the wurst).  For me... I can't say it holds the same appeal.  T does make really good buletten himself though (once when we had friends over for dinner this one person amazed us by packing away an unbelievable number of buletten.  Which we didn't realize until dinner was over and we whispered to each other, 'where are our leftovers?'  Alas.  Or rather, good thing we made plenty!). 

I really enjoyed this video from the Currywurst Museum (below).  You don't need to understand the German to get a sense of the atmosphere here...!  11 Euro admission is a little steep, though.  That's like 5 currywursts (maybe 3 if you include fries).