Puszta-Hütte

Just a few months after the introduction of the Deutsche Mark, the Puszta-Hütte opened in a largely destroyed Cologne – one of many simple "rubble stands" (Trümmerbuden) that first made street food popular in Germany at the time. This snack-bar culture was brought over by the American and British occupying soldiers, whose habit of eating on the go and standing up had been all but unknown here before. From such makeshift stands you could get things like Frikabrötchen (rissole rolls), baked goods or occasionally Reibekuchen (potato pancakes) – for immediate consumption and at comparatively high prices. Founder Max Lippert initially sold his Gulasch to passing customers from a makeshift hut near Neumarkt. Cultural anthropologist Gunther Hirschfelder sees the Puszta-Hütte as an early example of that "pluralization of taste" which shaped West Germany in the 1950s.

In the early 1950s the business moved around 30 metres further along into a building on Fleischmengergasse – Cologne's traditional street of the butchers' trade – where it was expanded into a fast-food restaurant with seating. This is still the home location today. The Sardis family has run the Puszta-Hütte since 1992 – first Nikolas Sardis, and since 2019 his son Günter. Under the advertising slogan "Our Gulasch gets even the oldest vintage back on a bicycle," the Gulasch is also canned according to the "farmer's wife's handed-down recipe" and sold by mail order; "Original Ungarischer Gulasch aus der Puszta-Hütte" is a registered trademark. There are branches in Hürth and Wesseling, plus mobile sales stands.