Taste currywurst & defeat in a Berlin Biergarten
Germany had been sailing through the Euro Championships, with only one team more imperious than them — the Spanish. Unfortunately, the draw meant they couldn't meet each other in the final. So a QF meeting had to do.
From the morning you could see everyone and everything sporting the German tricolour, kids wearing Die Mannschaft kits. One German friend booked us a table in a restaurant-cum-biergarten where we had a prime view of the huge screen. 'Please get there early!' he had said. And sure enough, he was already there protecting our group's table when I reached.
Under the awning of the beautiful gravel courtyard, the other tables behind us quickly filled up. When Germans want to feel good they eat the abominable currywurst. Sure enough, two people at our table order a plate each.
Sampling it off their plates, I concede to myself that this isn't the worst currywurst I've had. The French fries are blamelessly good, helpless accomplices in a crime not of their making. The slices of sausage a.k.a. wurst also bear a smaller share of the culpability. What are they to do if some cook — after West Berlin chef Herta Heuwer invented the dish in 1949 — wants to inundate them in a 'curry sose,' a kind of red-brown ooze that usually tastes of tomato, onions and uncooked industrial garam masala?
The sauce here was better than at other places. The masala had been cooked in, and the sausages were of good quality.
The game began, the football expectedly of very high quality. The crowd in the garden was partisan, but not
