Wurst Pate

The other day I was too lazy to lug myself through the snow to a fancy new German restaurant, so I decided to just bite the bullet and get currywurst from the stand around the corner from my apartment.  While it's not exactly high-class eats, it's most definitely popular and prevalent enough to be included in the scope of German food today. I think I can even say that it's the most commonly eaten German thing in Berlin. Apparently it was "invented" around 1950, but I'd still call it "new" and not really "traditional" cuisine.  I probably should've made the trek to the iconic cult favorite, Curry 36, but given I didn't really feel too enthusiastic about currywurst I opted for the convenient choice and not the famous one.

Anyways, I was glad to find that the stand had set up a sort of currywurst-eating pod for the winter months, in which they made a tent over the tables so you'd have a place to stand up and eat while being slightly less freezing. Even so, I left after a few minutes to eat it while walking down the street and be judged by the passersby. One thing I miss about America is being able to eat things on the go without getting weird looks.

Maybe it was due to the fact that I was starving, but I kind of loved it. My favorite element was the cute plastic fork. Leave it to Europeans to eat a hot dog with a fork, even their fast food is classier than ours. It wasn't as much of a hot dog as I expected, it was an almost sweet pork sausage. I expected the sauce to be ketchup with curry powder, but it actually tasted more like curried barbecue sauce. The fries were the crowning glory of this plate---hot, salted, and just crisp enough. 

While I get the obsession a bit more now, I don't think I'll ever be a die hard currywurst fan. I hear it's best when eaten while drunk in the middle of a night out, rather than on a snowing Monday afternoon, but I don't have enough time to test that theory. This experience didn't really give me much new information for my project, but I couldn't write about food in Berlin and omit currywurst, so there you go. 

Wurst Pate
Köpenickerstr. #?