BERLIN (AP) – Bite-sized happiness. Currywurst is considered a fast-food delicacy in Germany and a perfect pre-game treat.
UEFA has confirmed that football fans across Europe will find this tasty German invention on offer in stadiums across the country during the European Championship, which starts on Friday.
Pork sausage garnished with curry sauce is usually presented on a pristine white cardboard platter with a double-pronged plastic fork. It can be served with or without the skin – visiting fans will have developed their own preference by the end of the month-long tournament.
Although its origins are disputed, currywurst holds a special place in Berlin’s food culture.
“Our city is all about currywurst and I think our city cannot live without currywurst. Anyone who comes to Berlin has to try currywurst to know what the city is all about,” said Linda Konnopke, who helps run her family’s popular fast-food restaurant in the German capital’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood.
His great-grandparents, Max and Charlotte Konnopke, began selling sausages from their portable grill in 1930, and the family business has since become an institution famous for its currywurst, which Günter Konnopke, their son, introduced to East Berlin in 1960. an immediate success. The recipe is still a closely guarded family secret.
“Our absolute highlight is our skinless currywurst. This is our best-selling product,” said Linda Konnopke.
Currywurst is usually cut into convenient portions. It can be dipped in ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder, but some vendors – like Konnopke’s – use their own specific curry sauce.
A woman named Herta Heuwer is widely credited with its invention. Heuwer was one of thousands of Berlin’s “Trümmerfrauen,” or rubble women, who helped clean up the debris left after World War II, and later ran her own fast-food business in the city’s western Charlottenburg neighborhood.
Some say that Heuwer got bored one day and decided to experiment with the ingredients he had; others, that she ran out of mustard and needed an alternative. In any case, she claimed to have invented currywurst on September 4, 1949.
Berlin proclaimed itself the “capital of currywurst” on a plaque commemorating Heuwer, where she sold her first currywurst, but there are rival claims from Hamburg and the Ruhr region in western Germany.
At the German Cup final in Berlin last month, Kaiserslautern fan Luisa Albert said she prefers currywurst from Kaiserslautern, which is in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. As stadium food, she said, it’s always a winner.
“Currywurst is the best thing you can eat before a game,” she said. “It gives you the strength to cheer, celebrate and do everything.”
Fans attending games at Berlin’s Olympiastadion will be able to get their currywurst from Hertha Berlin fan Ollie Brandt, who has been offering fast food outside the stadium for over 40 years.
Brandt is very proud to offer currywurst sausages made according to another long-standing family recipe, but he doesn’t think much of currywurst from outside the capital.
“If you go to the Rhineland, for example, you will find grilled sausage smeared with a kind of curry sauce sold as currywurst. But this isn’t currywurst,” Brandt said as he held up a package of his own sausages. “This is a real currywurst.”
Brandt said fans would simply have to try out the different types and styles to determine their favorite.
“We have I don’t know how many thousands of snack bars all over Berlin, in the East and West. Everyone does it differently. It doesn’t taste the same anywhere, but it’s still just unique,” Brandt said. “You have to try.”
___
