Albert's Schloss Soho Beer Hall: Munich's Big Six Till 2am

Albert's Schloss pours all six of Munich's big breweries under one roof at 20-24 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 7EU, and it opens at 10am every day of the week. That makes it the most central German beer hall in the West End: Monday to Saturday the doors stay open until 2am, and on Sunday the night ends at 10:30pm. The ground-floor tavern takes walk-ins, while the bigger hall downstairs is where the bands, the long tables and the bench dancing happen.

Mission Mars, the Manchester group behind the brand, opened its first London Schloss in July 2024 in the former Rainforest Café unit inside the Trocadero, according to Restaurant Online's opening report from 12 July 2024. The same report put the space at 18,000 square feet across several levels with room for more than 500 covers, which explains why it feels less like a pub and more like a small Alpine village dropped beneath Shaftesbury Avenue.

London was the fourth city for the concept after Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, and the team kept the formula that made the northern sites famous: a bakery that turns out bread and pastries every morning, a kitchen built around Alpine comfort food, and a nightly show. The official site describes the whole place as an Alpine retreat and pleasure palace, and the carved balconies, antler chandeliers and fur-draped benches make that tagline feel literal rather than decorative.

The ground floor is called Albert's Schenke Tavern, and it is the part most visitors walk straight past on the way to the stairs. That is a mistake if beer is the point of the trip. The tavern claims to be the only place in London where you can drink all of Munich's Big Six in one room: Augustiner, Spaten, Hacker-Pschorr, Paulaner, Hofbräu and Löwenbräu, the same breweries that hold tents at the Oktoberfest on the Theresienwiese.

There is also fresh tank Pilsner Urquell, unpasteurised and delivered weekly from Plzeň, poured by trained tapsters who are there for exactly that job. A good tasting plan is a Helles from Augustiner, a Hacker-Pschorr dunkel, and then the Urquell to compare a Bohemian pils against the Bavarian lagers. Restaurant Online reported at opening that most pints came in under £7, and the tavern runs an all-day menu of pretzels, grazing boards, toasted sandwiches and wursts alongside the taps.

Take the stairs down and the scale changes. The basement holds the Cook Haus kitchen, a central bier and cocktail bar and the main stage. The long communal benches here are what the venue calls its Bier Halle tables, styled as Viking tables for big groups, and the house rule is written into the website copy: you are allowed to dance on das benches. The site pitches it at corporate events, milestone birthdays and pre-theatre and post-show crowds, and on a busy night you see all three at neighbouring tables.

The show schedule changes through the week. Disko Wunderbar fills the midweek slot with glitter and grooves, Juke Box Baby lets the crowd choose the playlist for the band, Friday Fröhlich brings the house band on Fridays, and Pleasure Palace has the house bands reimagining classics while DJs and roaming performers work the room. Kunst Kabaret leans darker, with cabaret acts. If you want a quiet conversation over a stein, sit upstairs, because downstairs gets loud once the band starts.

Start with the Grand Pretzel at £7.50, baked in-house and served with garlic aioli, mustard and gherkin. It is big enough for three people and it is the best thing to soak up a litre of Spaten. The Honey Bratwurst, also £7.50, comes with sweet mustard, and the Bier Onion Soup at £9.50 is made with Stiegl lager and Gruyère and served with a 'Top Hat'.

For the full Oktoberfest plate, order the Schweinshaxe at £22: a crispy roasted pork knuckle with braised red cabbage, apple and a rich wine gravy. The website calls it the famous 12-hour slow-cooked Bavarian pork knuckle, and one knuckle is plenty for two people who also ordered a pretzel. The Chicken Schnitzel costs £19.50 with pumpkin seed pesto and new potatoes, and the Beef Goulash is also £19.50. Skip the Tuscan schiacciata sandwiches unless you are in a hurry, since they are fine but have nothing Bavarian about them.

Weekday afternoons are the easy window, because the kitchen serves all day and the show programme is built around the evenings. For Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, when the band nights draw the West End crowd, booking a table through the website is the only reliable way to sit downstairs with a group. Walk-ins are always welcome in the Schenke Tavern upstairs.

If the line outside looks longer than twenty minutes, stay upstairs, order a Paulaner and wait for a table to clear below. For bigger celebrations the venue rents out Ludwig's Tavern, a mezzanine for 40 to 120 guests with its own bar and a view of the stage, the Schnapps Booths for up to 12, and The Vault, a Munich-style bierkeller room lined with antique steins for 30 to 50 people.

The Schloss sits between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, so it slots neatly into a West End evening. Before a show, walk two minutes east to Gerrard Street in Chinatown for a bakery stop, or head north up Rupert Street into the heart of Soho for a browse along Berwick Street's market stalls and record shops. The Shaftesbury Avenue theatres are close enough that you can finish a schnitzel ten minutes before curtain up.

After the show, the walk back works the other way, and the Schloss is the obvious place to land for a late stein, since the bar runs until 2am from Monday to Saturday. If the hall is full, the nearest traditional alternative is The Harp on Chandos Place in Covent Garden, a cask ale pub a short walk east, though it has no German beer focus and no band.

Address: Albert's Schloss Soho, 20-24 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 7EU. Hours: Monday to Saturday 10am to 2am, Sunday 10am to 10:30pm. Nearest Tube stations are Piccadilly Circus on the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines and Leicester Square on the Northern and Piccadilly lines, with Covent Garden a slightly longer walk.

The venue is wheelchair accessible, assistance dogs are welcome and there is free Wi-Fi. A breakfast menu runs from opening, so the Schloss also works for a late-morning coffee and pastry before the beer starts. Private hire enquiries go to the events team by email, and the official site lists the full showtime timetable, which is worth reading if you want a specific band night rather than a DJ night.