Albert’s Schloss, W1

Visited 12/08/24 Spotted this venue in the current edition of London Drinker as being recently opened on the site of the old Trocadero. It is a large Alpine / Bavarian bar on two levels, accessed ground level on Shaftesbury Avenue with bouncers on the door at my arrival a bit before 10pm although the ground floor bar was closed, and the basement bar shall we be generous and say sparsely populated. I would imagine this would need to be much busier later in week to sustain itself, but it was surprisingly quiet despite the area around being manically busy given peak holiday season. The ground floor has a bar along the back wall opposite the entrance and to the left of the doors is a rather grand staircase taking you down to the vast underground chasm providing a number of bars (including a Schnapps bar) and multiple seating areas in various nooks and crannies. There is a stage for live music and a rather sad looking DJ was playing during my short visit. The lighting was pretty good and made for a good ambiance (absent few here, those that were were pissed and loud, and the pretty sad live music). The beer on tap that I noted were Pilsner Urquell, Stiegl Goldbrau, Paulaner Helles, Erdinger Weissbier, Hofbrau Helles, Krombacher Pils, Pravha, Bitburger Unfiltered, Fruli (which was served in 2/3rd pint glasses at over £6 a glass from memory), a cider from Thatcher’s and the refreshing Schofferhofer Grapefruit Radler that must cost many multiples of the couple of quid I buy this stuff from Lidl or Aldi! A really good range of German beers in cans and bottles that cost as much as the GDP of a small country. Also noted on way out on one of the big beer boards over one of the bars that they had a couple of foreign (ie non-German) craft beers from Five Points and Gipsy Hill, predictably XPA and Hepcat. There are apparently similar venues in Manc and B’ham so can see why they would want to bring to London. My perception is that a fair number of these large German been hall type venues haven’t lasted in London so will be interesting to see what the survivorship of this one is like. Can’t say I will be returning to find out in respect of this one any time soon.

Official site of Albert’s Schloss - albertsschloss.com

Official site of Albert’s Schloss - albertsschloss.com