Kansas City Blog

​The museum community added a member this Saturday when the Currywurst Museum opened its doors in Berlin, Germany. It's a shrine to the 60-year-old sausage, which is deep-fried, sliced and then liberally coated with ketchup and mustard powder. Eaters have a choice of whether to keep the casing made from intestines on the sliced sausages. If you're asking why build a museum, the new director explains it with simple German efficiency:

"The exhibition is a tribute to the currywurst phenomenon," said Birgit Breloh, the museum's director. "No other German dish inspires such excitement."

The museum -- located behind Checkpoint Charlie -- offers visitors an interactive tour about the history of the currywurst. Germans apparently eat 800 million currywursts every year. Akin to the hot dog in the United States, the popular sausage is available in street kiosks as prevalent as hot dog carts in New York City.

Let us hope that a museum dedicated to weiners finds more success than a hot-dog-stand- owner outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Big Apple. Pasang Sherpa was recently evicted from his prime spot outside the Met's entrances for failure to pay back rent -- the rent for that vendor space is $643,000 annually.

The idea of a food museum is not a new one, but it can be difficult to know which spots are a good deal. Chow has a list of 10 food museums that are worth the price of admission. The SPAM Museum in Austin, Minnesota, is the closest and it's free. If you're looking for a particular type of food, Food History News maintains an online database of international museums.

As for the Currywurst Museum, this is just another great moment in sausage history. So, consider throwing a bit of curry on your bratwursts tonight in honor of the occasion.
 
[Image via Flickr: plasticbystander]