Berlin Currywurst

Herta Heuwer is credited with mixing ketchup, curry powder and a few other things behind a snack stand in Charlottenburg in 1949, and the result long outlasted her. A Currywurst is a bratwurst, grilled or fried, pushed through a slicing grid into coins and buried under warm curried tomato sauce with more powder dusted on top. The first decision is mit or ohne Darm, with skin, which snaps, or without, which is softer and considered the more Berlin option. It arrives on a paper tray with a small wooden fork and either a bread roll or chips, eaten standing at a shelf on the pavement. Every district has a stand locals will argue for, usually the one nearest home.

What you actually see

• Mit or ohne Darm - with or without skin, the choice that divides the city.
• The slicing machine - the sausage pushed through a grid into even coins.
• Pommes rot-weiss - chips with both ketchup and mayonnaise, the standard side order.
• The standing shelf - waist-high boards outside the kiosk where everyone eats upright.

When to go

Year round and at almost any hour, since many kiosks run late and a few barely close. Lunchtime queues at the busier stands move fast because the process is mechanical. Winter is arguably the right season: a hot tray at a cold pavement shelf makes far more sense in January than it does in July.

Honest expectations

It is cheap food and eats like it. The sauce is sweet, the sausage is ordinary, and a bad one is genuinely bad. Portions run small for the price at tourist-facing stands near the main sights. There is nowhere to sit, no cutlery beyond the wooden fork, and vegetarians get little more than a soy version. Do not expect a revelation.

Nearby

Kreuzberg's market hall, the Charlottenburg streets where the dish began and the kiosks around Prenzlauer Berg.