Curry 36

Berlin, Germany

Curry 36 has operated at Mehringdamm 36 in Kreuzberg since 1981, and it is one of the few Imbiss stands that has remained genuinely popular with both tourists and daily regulars over four decades. The stand opens at 9am and closes at 5am the following day, which makes it one of the only currywurst sources in the city available at 3am on a Wednesday. The mit Darm version is the default here: a sausage with natural casing, grilled until the skin has colour and snap. The curry sauce is thick, red-orange, sweet and warm without being hot. Night buses stop nearby and the queue in the early hours is often longer than the lunch queue. Construction workers, office staff, clubbers, tourists, and taxi drivers arriving for a break all eat from the same paper plates at the standing counter along the front of the kiosk.

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Sausages served here

Currywurst

Berlin, Germany

Currywurst is Berlin's most consumed street food: a steamed and pan-fried pork sausage, sliced into rounds, blanketed in a curried tomato ketchup sauce, and dusted with curry powder. It is sold at Imbiss stands across Germany, but Berlin claims it as its own invention. The sauce is the point. The sausage is a delivery mechanism for the sweet, spiced, faintly vinegary tomato base that Herta Heuwer developed in 1949 at her stand on Stuttgarter Platz in Charlottenburg. Germans eat roughly 800 million currywursts per year, and Berlin alone accounts for about 70 million of those. Two versions divide the city: mit Darm (with casing, which gives a snap on the bite) and ohne Darm (without casing, softer and finer-textured). Most East Berliners default to ohne Darm; in the West, mit Darm is the classic choice. Both come on a paper plate with a small plastic fork and, almost always, a side of Pommes frites or a Brötchen.

porkBerlinstreet-food