New Currywurst Museum Commemorates
Signature German Dish

Culinary school introduces aspiring gourmands to a vast range of international cuisines and signature dishes, but even the most worldly of would-be chefs might not know about Germany's unofficial national dish: currywurst. But Germans certainly do, and they consume it with gusto: 800 million currywursts are sold per year, and this summer, the Deutsches Currywurst Museum opened in Berlin to commemorate the popular foodstuff.

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The dish, which consists of sliced pork sausage served in a curry-tomato sauce, originated in post-World War II Berlin, when food options were limited for the recovering residents. Currywurst offered an affordable yet still flavorful meal that quickly spread in popularity, starting as a snack for construction workers and laborers, and then spreading into restaurants and street-vendor stands throughout the country. Though nobody's sure exactly what was in the original currywurst recipe, today the dish is found in abundant variety, from lemongrass flavor to Indian spice, served with French fries or white bread.

The Currywurst Museum, which was designed as an educational and entertaining space for fans of currywurst, includes history and legends, an examination of currywurst in film and television, and even an interactive Spice Chamber. The museum is sure to become part of the pantheon of unusual culinary museums around the world, including the Mustard Museum in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin and the Kimchi Museum in Seoul, South Korea.

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