The Hottest Dog in Town

BERLIN --

Gotta love it. A nation known for more than a thousand types of sophisticated, subtly differentiated sausages (and equally famed for its provincialism as in “It’s my way or the highway”) is basking in the fame generated by a simple hot dog doused with American-style ketchup and exotic spices.

It’s called the Curry Wurst and it’s sold at tiny stands on every corner in Berlin…and in between the corners, too.  The gig involves a bratwurst (typically pork and typically cooked on a griddle) that’s sliced into quarter-inch pieces, doused with a neon ketchup (that may or may not contain chili powder and Worcestershire sauce) and sprinkled liberally with curry powder. The dog is served on a crinkled paper plate with a single plastic toothpick. It’s meant to be eaten standing up, which means either in elegant fashion with a beer at a hightop table smack in the middle of the sidewalk; or, more simply, by itself while walking along the street juggling guide books and sloshing ketchup over your shoes.

I know you’re wrinkling up your nose right now. But, trust me, it’s an eye-opening experience and a tasty one, too.

For starters the bratwursts themselves are spectacularly delicious. Super juicy, tender and with a remarkably fine texture. Supposedly, the Curry Wursts in what was formerly West Berlin are skinless; those served in former East Berlin have skins. I don’t want to get into a border skirmish. Let’s just say I was too busy scarfing the wurst I bought on Under Den Linden to check out its dermatological condition.

Of course, there’s a battle over who made the first powdered dog. Vendors in Hamburg (who somehow turn the ketchup sauce brown) claim it started there. Folks in the Ruhr area claim one of their sausage sellers accidentally dropped a can of curry powder into a vat of ketchup.

But Berliners know best. They say that a very bored sausage merchant named Herta Heuwer experimented one day in her Berlin sausage stand and came up with the iconic dog. That was back in 1949…and the fragrant snack has been perfuming the capital city’s streets ever since (supposedly even during WWII and its aftermath when Berlin wasn’t the capital city).

I’m told that you can get a good Curry Wurst at any stand in the city. But if you insist on visiting the most famous, head for Witty’s or Ku’damm 195, both on the major thoroughfare Kurfurstendamm in former West Berlin or Konnopke’s Imbiss on Danziger Strasse in former East Berlin.