Currywurst is the German street-food sausage dish served with curry ketchup and usually fries.
The dish consists of steamed or grilled pork sausage, commonly a bratwurst, cut into slices and covered with a sauce based on ketchup or tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, and curry powder. It is commonly sold at snack stands, railway stations, markets, and football grounds.
Currywurst is strongly associated with Berlin. A popular origin story credits Herta Heuwer, who is said to have created the sauce in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district in 1949. The exact details of the invention are debated, but the dish’s postwar Berlin identity is well established.
Currywurst is not a single sausage variety: the sauce and preparation vary by region and vendor. It is also different from currywurst-flavored sausages sold in supermarkets, which imitate the street-food dish rather than define it.