Well, my life has again been giving true meaning to “no rest for the weary.” After just over a week back in the US, I found myself again packing my bags, and heading off for Frankfurt am Main, Germany. So I ended up taking the bus down to Boston, having a somewhat uninspired meal at Logan (Terminal B at Logan kind of sucks for food options), and then heading out to London Heathrow. After a red-eye flight and switching from T3 to T5, I ended up having a most pleasant breakfast of miso ramen at Wagamama (read up here for a previous review), and then heading of on my flight to Frankfurt, where I caught a train into downtown.
At that point, I found myself in Frankfurt’s Hauptbahnhof (the train station) at ~6pm local time, and more than a little hungry. The great thing is that in Europe, people actually use trains (and train stations), so your typical station has a lot of reasonable food options. In this case, I found myself arriving at the Hauptbahnhof with a Wursthelden stand right across from my arrival track.
Wursthelden is a great example of one of the classics of German street food: the currywurst stand. Really, currywurst is a simple concept: take a steamed or grilled sausage, slice it up, and serve it up with a healthy portion of curry sauce and some fries. And Wursthelden is basically just a currywurst joint, since the menu basically consists of…. sausages (wurst) and fries (pommes), in various combinations. Wursthelden does take it to a level above most currywurst stands, by having a reasonably large selection of sausages and several sauces you can use (including mayo, and several levels of spiciness for curry sauce).
I opted for a straightforward currywurst: bratwurst, hot curry sauce, and fries. Interestingly, they have a cool little machine into which they insert a hot sausage from the grill, and it instantly slices it into inch-long chunks. Adding a healthy heap of fries, and applying a liberal amount of hot curry sauce and more curry powder, and my meal was ready.
How was it? Currywurst isn’t fine dining, but this worked out well. The sausage was quite good; nice and spicy with a fine grind, a juicy interior, and a nice sear. The curry sauce was nicely spicy and flavorful as well, and served also as a nice dipping sauce for the fries. The fries were above-average in quality, with a nice fluffy interior and a crisp exterior.
Overall, Wursthelden was a rather nice little currywurst stand, and a good place to satisfy my travel hungers. I wish I had an equivalent to it back home.
(And with this review, I’ve now visited nine countries with Offbeat Eats!)
