All Roads Lead To… StrEat Byte

Windhoek gets a bit Berlin with the latest addition to the city’;s burgeoning food truck scene.

Hitting the street with an emphasis on the ‘;e’;, StrEat Byte is currently cooking up currywurst and döner kebab outside Obeco on Macadam Street.

For those unfamiliar with the Berlin staple, currywurst is traditionally sliced pork sausage drenched in a curry and ketchup sauce and often served with French fries.

Basic, kind of odd but wildly popular, currywurst, according to the German Currywurst Museum (yes, there’;s a museum), was invented by a German woman named Herta Heuwer who traded with British soldiers to obtain ketchup and curry powder in 1949. Heuwer then mixed the ingredients together and served it with pork sausage and eventually everybody was currywurst crazy.

Or something like that.

As for döner kebab, to hear the spokesman for the Association of Turkish Döner Producers in Europe, Gürsel Ülber, tell it via BBC Travel, Germany consumes two million kebabs a day.

What the Germans are eating by the boatload is meat cooked on a vertical spit, thinly sliced, placed in a pita or flatbread and loaded with salad. A delicious gift from Germany’;s Turkish population and particularly a man named Kadir Nurman who sold Germany’;s first döner kebab from his stall in West Berlin in 1972.

With thanks to the British and the Turkish, many years later StrEat Byte makes its humble entry amidst post-colonial Windhoek in 2018.

Serving just three items – a large or bambino döner with marinated pork from the layer skewer served with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, onions and two sauces as well as a splash of currywurst housed in an adorable biodegradable sugar cane boat with a fresh brotchen but alas no French fries – StrEat Byte is a solid two-month-old stop if you like your lunch quick, easy and drowning in sauce.

If you’;re sold on StrEat Byte’;s story, be sure to ask friendly food truck staff Michael or Yamilah for a loyalty card so you can exchange every 10 stamps for one free bambino döner or one currywurst, and grab a bottle of water because the curry sauce is serious.