I’m from Berlin. Currywurst means something to me. I’m agnostic to mit oder ohne Darm (with or without skin), but I’m picky about the places. In Berlin, I try to avoid the posh ones which offer fifteen different levels of spiciness and variations on the curry sauce. I try to find places in random locations which exist or at least 15 years, i.e. just a bit longer than the current Currywurst hype. Cheap is good, and a run-down place is great, as long as it’s not swimming in grease. So: clean-filthy.
As I was walking through Rotterdam these days, I stumbled into the Bratwurst Bar. That is a new street-food place, focused on German sausages. On the menu are Bratwurst and Currywurst, where Bratwurst is a classic German-style grilles sausage and Currywurst is a fried-then-grilled sausage to be served with Currywurst. At least, that’s what it is in Germany.
I have to say that all sausages looked rather German – compared to what one usually finds offered as Bratwurst in Holland. That’s a great point. Things were tailored to a wider range of palettes, so pork-based sausage was only one option aside of chicken-based sausage and beef-based sausage. Fine, I’m not orthodox about it, as long as I can also pick pork for the most authentic flavor.
I ordered Currywurst, because I thought the Bratwurst was a bit too expensive (3,50 at least for the sausage only, while the Currywurst including sauce was 3,00). Then the friendly lady asked me: “Met curry sauce?” With… with curry sauce?
Ehm…
It’s a Currywurst.
Only then I realized that the sausage was offered with the option to select one of three different sauces: curry sauce, mayonnaise, or mustard. Curry sauce. Or mayonnaise. Or mustard. To go with a Currywurst.
Mayonnaise. With a Currywurst. Or mustard.
That’s no Currywurst. Currywurst is not a Currywurst because you pour Curry powder on top of a random sauce. And I don’t even want to imagine mayonnaise with curry powder. Or mustard with curry powder. Oh well. I guess there is a market where people don’t necessarily know better.
She then proceeded to cut the Currywurst. That’s okay, because Currywurst has to be served already cut in little pieces, while it has to be fried and grilled in one piece. There are tools which allow to make several smooth cuts at the same time. Classic kitchen scissors are not such a tool. Their blades are not thin enough and consequently squeeze the sausage too much, breaking its inner structure.
Classic kitchen scissors did she use.
Okay. The menu is a bit weird, and the preparation could improve with a very small-money investment. But after all, it’s all about the taste. She was a bit stingy with the curry powder, but the taste of the sauce was decent. Not very much curry, but still noticeable not ketchup. The consistency of the Currywurst itself was fine. Nothing of it was extraordinary, but regarding the flavor, nothing was disgusting or repelling. Hence, it is a viable options for Germans living in Rotterdam to once in a while taste the flavor of home. I at least would go again.
Onabike.cc 