Friday 14 August 2009

Currywurst museum - taking the sausage?

(Picture from Spiegel online)
Berlin has a new currywurst museum. Why does all the best stuff open once you've left? I loved the month I lived in Berlin but I have to admit to only having one decent currywurst whilst there and never during my 3 years in the Rhurgebiet. For those of you unaware of this German delicacy, currywurst (or curried sausage) is essentially a chopped sausage with tomato ketchup and curry powder (German standard curry powder, so not hot atall.) I always preferred a good standard bratwurst im broetchen (sausage in a breadroll), especially when the bratwurst is 3 times the length of the bun, making the whole thing comedic.

I know about currywurst from reading The Invention of Curried Sausage by Uwe Timm. It's a nice novella and Lena Brueker's tale of wartime romance and survival is a touching way to introduce the birth of Berlin's culinary masterpiece. Plus any book based on the invention of fast food snack has a certain uniqueness anyway.

The question remains however, why don't we have a Fish and Chips museum? I appreciate fish-and-chip's rise to fame is not quite so linked to post-war development and east/west clashes in a symbolic city, but there has to be some information worthy of an exhibition. The kids could play on the chip-frying simulator or giant map depicting mushy pea trends across the UK, whilst the adults consider the display on changing portion size and listen through vinegar bottle shaped headphones to interviews on the environmental impact of banning newspapers as wrapping. I'll write to the national lottery for funding shall I?

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