RIP Herman Ze German (June 2016) – killed by Brexit.

The hot dog is a strange beast, isn’t it – a thing you imagine you might see at American sports events, might conceivably find at a concession inside Wembley Arena or the O2 to stave off the hunger pangs during a Coldplay concert and you’ve probably avoided at a festival on the grounds of health and safety.

You definitely used to see them at your local cinema, rotating endlessly in an E.Coli-filled glass box that may or may not have replenished its frankfurters at some time in the past month. You don’t see them any more, do you, and that’s probably for health and safety reasons, though I imagine that somewhere in Norfolk or Lincolnshire there’s a frankfurter that’s been rotating since Jaws came out in the mid-1970s, just waiting for someone to slap it between two sawdust-filled buns and slather it in red and yellow gloop and greasy onions before stinking out the auditorium.

I don’t think I’d eaten one in at least a decade until last week in Charlotte Street, epicentre of the area that guide books call Fitzrovia but no Londoner actually does, when I stumbled upon Herman Ze German, a place that was bizarrely empty at 7 o’clock on a Friday night and had two of its three outdoor tables completely unoccupied at a time when every other place with food or drink was overflowing with office workers celebrating a hot and sunny start to the weekend.

I fear this is merely a sign of the Europhobic mood in Fitzrovia as Brexiteers flock to proper British pubs serving proper British grub with proper British lager, eschewing the brightly coloured allure of Herman Ze German, with his vast steins of suspiciously cloudy Bavarian beer and enormous sausages in buns that almost certainly conform to an obscure EU regulation governing their size, width and curvature.

I think the comedy name betrays the fact that there’s some of that famous Teutonic humour at work here but I wasn’t prepared for quite how much, from their slogan – “Our wurst is ze best” – to the staff, who are indeed German, and insanely jovial.

One waitress in particular seemed to have been picked specifically for her deadpan wit, which was of the following nature: “Have you ordered your sausages yet?” she would inquire anxiously. “I hope so, because I’m afraid to tell you that the kitchen has run out of sausages.”

She would then study your crestfallen face before slapping her drndl-adjacent thigh, doubling over in laughter and yelling in your face: “NOT REALLY! OF COURSE WE HAVEN’T RUN OUT OF SAUSAGES! SAUSAGES ARE THE ONLY THING WE SELL… I AM ONLY JOKING!!!”

As you zip your sides back up you may well reflect that this is exactly the sort of ribald banter that we’re going to miss when a nation of narrow-minded fuckwits votes to ban foreign humour in favour of our own hilarious home-grown “comedy”, focusing exclusively on bodily functions – belching, farting, shitting, puking, wanking – and the misfortunes of innocent people suffering pain as a result of slipping, tripping, falling over, banging their heads or crashing a car or bicycle, and of course the hilarious behaviour and appearance of homosexuals and people with brown skin.

Proper British humour: it’s the envy of the world, you know. Like our food. And our football hooligans.

Anyway, back to the sausages. They’re fantastic. Really a cut above the ones you used to get in your local Odeon that tasted best if you disguised the flavour with industrial levels of ketchup and mustard after first drinking several pints of beer so that you had no interest in flavour at all.

Herman’s sausages all come from a butcher in the Black Forest, a phrase that’s not as ominous as it sounds, and include a bratwurst and a bockwurst and a currywurst and chips and a schnitzel and sauerkraut if you want it, and a combo platter that is advertised, rib-ticklingly, as the “Wurst Deal”.

It also serves those giant one-litre steins of excellent imported Bavarian beer, including a delicious Weisse Bier that has a back note of banana and definitely doesn’t come with a slice of lemon floating on top. All of which will probably become illegal if the Brexiters get their way, to be replaced by roast beef and fish’n’chips. And if that’s what you want, then you should definitely vote Brexit.

*2024 update – as predicted, Herman Ze German has now closed and gone back to Germany.