Photo by Kat Carney
New yorkers haven dirty water dogs. Berliners have currywurst.
Sold in food stalls all over the German capital, a Berliner currywurst is a sausage smothered in curry-flavored tomato sauce and served with French fries topped, as all respectable frites should be, with a hearty dollop of mayo.
In our food-loving metropolis, it’s easy to get your hands on most cuisine, including German fare, but this most fundamental of Teutonic delicacies is hard to find. Many of the menus of the city’s German restaurants lack currywurst even when other sausages are offered.
Enter Dirk Martin, one of the owners of Lederhosen in the West Village, who says currywurst is one of his most popular menu items, right atop the list with bratwurst and weisswurst. But it took a little convincing for diners to embrace it.
“My customers had to experience it,” says Martin. “It needs to be someone who likes to explore cuisines.”
Originally from a town near Dresden, Martin says those who come in and order the sandwich on their own have usually lived in Germany, where they’ve had it previously. Once introduced, however, cautious first timers soon call it a favorite. “It’s something that would stick with them,” he says.
While the origins of the dish are unclear, today chefs take license with the recipe, creating their own version of the sauce and choosing between pork sausage and beef sausage.
“It’s not defined by the sausage,” says Martin. “If you have a good beef sausage and you put a good sauce on it, that’s a good currywurst.”
Martin’s is a beef sausage topped with his secret homemade curry sauce, red cabbage and onions and served with a roll ($5). In Berlin, a currywurst comes sans the bread, though this is one of the alterations that Lederhosen has made in order to bring the dish to the States—the other is to do away with the fries. “French fries weren’t an option for me,” says Martin. “You can get that at McDonald’s.”
More than anything, Lederhosen’s currywurst is comfort food.Warm and a little messy, the curry is more aromatic than overwhelming, and paired with the red cabbage and onions, the dish is snappy and flavorful.
Even the restaurant is made to feel like a cozy den, wallpapered in banners and catering to small groups hanging out and watching TV.
My only quibble with Lederhosen’s currywurst is that there isn’t enough of it. In Germany, the dish is massive; but amusingly, the small size of the Lederhosen sandwich was a concession made for the diminutive American diner. Don’t Europeans spend their days laughing about fat Americans? How could they shrink one of their best-known sandwiches? “You’re a small girl,” Martin told me. “Have you ever seen a small German?”
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Lederhosen
39 Grove St. (betw. Bedford & Bleecker Sts.), 212-2006-7691
anonymous
