‘I can’t believe this is on our doorstep'.
A sentence I’ve repeated time and time again ever since we moved into the heart of the city. Every bar, every cafe and every shop we’ve visited, unique and completely different from the place before has made me realise quite how lucky we are to live here. Quite honestly we are spoilt for choice from the array and variety of incredible places there are to see and experience right here on our doorstep.
For followers of my blog, or that of my life may remember me starting a little segment here on my blog wayyy back in 2016 to be exact. A space I intended to share the places we’d visited here in Birmingham, be it a meal, a drink or even just a day out. We quite often used to venture into the city to enjoy all it has to offer, even then I think I was quite often taken aback by just how incredible some of the places we visited were, and now we live here and with even more places opening up left right and centre I’d be silly not to start that segment back up again.
So I thought I’d start with Albert Schloss.
"A retreat from the modern world where we invite you to discover new things, celebrate one another and revel in the wünder of our Schloss."
Traditionally as we do for most birthdays, the person whose birthday it is picks a place they want to go to eat or have drinks at but time around Jay was struggling to pick. Coincidentally however the opening of Albert Schloss’s brand spanking new venue in Birmingham coincided with Jays birthday so that pretty much set the plan into motion. We were lucky given it was actually the first night of their opening that we managed to get a reservation, which we were, of course, over the moon about.
Arriving to dine at 8 our table wasn’t quite ready, which we weren’t actually fussed about. It gave us an opportunity to head to the bar and grab a drink whilst admiring the stunning surroundings. I didn’t take picture of this but I was in awe of the incredible copper barrels sitting above the immaculately clean bar.
Opting for beer Jay chose Birmingham Rein and I simply had to give one of their festive cocktails a go. I went for the Rhubarb & Rasberri Sour which was actually quite heavily flavoured by Rhubarb which got a huge thumbs up from me. Flavourful, fruity and pink what’s not to love???
With our drinks in hand, we headed back to our host who informed us our table was now ready which meant time to pick our food. I’m very much a study-the-pdf-of-the-menu-online-kind-of-person so that when I come to pick food at the venue I don’t feel too overwhelmed by all of the choices on offer and can instead make my decision much easier but even after doing so, on this occasion I still couldn’t quite decide what I was in the mood to eat.
After much deliberation, I opted for the Spiced Roast Cauliflower Kebab served with baba ganoush and toasted almonds atop a charred flatbread with pomegranate, turmeric cabbage, bier chilli sauce, lemon aioli and fresh herbs. I'm a huge lover of pomegranates in savoury food so that was a big factor in my decision to have this meal. I also loved that it was vegan and not like anything I’d tried before. It was delicious yet surprisingly spicy so that cocktail was very much needed.
Jay had the Bratwurst which had a choice between classic served with a bun and fried or served with Bavarian potatoes, pea salad, sauerkraut and mustard, he opted for the latter, which he loved!
We chose not to have a dessert on this occasion, with it being Jays birthday I’d made him a cake so it seemed wrong to have anything else when we had a cake waiting for us at home so we decided to have another drink after our meal instead, one for the road.
Now one of my rules is if there’s a daiquiri on the menu, I order it. Daiquiris are my favourite cocktail so I opted for the classic Strawberry Daiquiri and Jay chose to have another beer. It was only after we spotted their Artisan Schnapps all of which sounded amazing. We aren’t typically shot people, well I say we, I am actually quite partial to a shot every now and again and as it was jays birthday we said ‘why not?!’ There was Wild Strawberry, Lemon Curd, Blackcurrant, Black Forest Gateau, Raspberry and Vanilla, Sea Salted Caramel, Black Cherry, Pear and Alpine Honey. So I went for the Lemond Curd which for me is an obvious choice I LOVE anything lemon. And jay loves his Vanilla flavoured things so he went for the Raspberry and Vanilla shot. They were both DELICIOUS I could have honestly had another!
We are definitely going to pop back for another meal in the future and hopefully catch some more of the entertainment they have to offer. We managed to catch a little slice of that from our table on this occasion but we'd love to see more. Luckily each night they have different performers or artists that take to the stage to the delight of the audience including cabaret performers, pianists and their very own Haus band, whats not to love?
What's your opinion?