Mr M and I had drinks with a few friends on Friday night at the beautiful German Gymnasium in Kings Cross. The cocktails here are excellent, in particular a smoky little rum-based number called St Luscious, which more than lived up to its name.
The German Gymnasium is one of many bars and restaurants that have popped up in this part of London in the past few years, and Kings Cross is now practically unrecognisable from the seedy-looking place it used to be.
Formerly one of the first purpose-built gyms in London, the building itself is very impressive, so impressive it actually won a design award last year. The bar and restaurant are upstairs, overlooking the Grand Café on the ground floor. As you go up the stairs you have a good view of the Grand Café and once upstairs there are exposed timber beams and retro posters of gymnasts.
We’d been to the German Gymnasium for drinks once before on a wet Sunday afternoon in January (so I’ve used photos from both visits in this post). The bar had been fairly quiet at the time, and not surprisingly there was much more of a buzz about the place on Friday night. Our friends were there before us and managed to get a table, although they had had to stand for a bit first.
Unfortunately, when the waitress came to take our order, I couldn’t remember what it was I had drunk last time, except that it had rum in it, but I knew that’s what I wanted again. One of the barmen came over and by then I was able to produce a half-decent description of the drink I was after. “I think you’re talking about a St Luscious,” he said, correctly as it turns out.
The St Luscious is made up of Zacapa 23 rum, fig liqueur, lemon juice and peach bitters. This is smoked with cinnamon wood and served in a little smoke-filled bottle, which is then poured into a champagne saucer and finished with a piece of fig. As it’s poured, the smoke escapes from the bottle and is really quite captivating to watch.
The taste of this concoction is a mixture of sweet and smoky – not everyone’s cup of tea (Mr M didn’t like it very much), but I loved it. There’s no overpowering alcohol taste and the combination of the fig, peach and smoke is delicious.
Mr M ordered a gin martini with a twist. He’s sampled a fair few of the martinis in German Gymnasium now (dirty, with an olive and with a twist) and he loves all of them. Later on, we had an old fashioned, which was also very good. Be warned it is served with a cherry, which I really liked, but purists may be less keen on.
Finally, I should mention The Flaming Zeppelin cocktail. I didn’t get one of my own before we left, but I had a sip of my friend’s and it was beautiful. It’s a mixture of pear and cinnamon vodka, plum liqueur, grapefruit juice and vanilla syrup – the vanilla comes through really nicely, and this is another great drink by the very talented mixologists at German Gymnasium.
I can’t speak for the food, as we didn’t eat here on this occasion, but the cocktails are fantastic and fairly priced at around £10 each. The staff are also great – good humoured, accommodating and skilled at recognising cocktails from fairly shoddy descriptions. There’s a lot to do in this area now, but cocktails at the German Gymnasium would definitely be one of my top recommendations for anyone planning a night out in Kings Cross.
Albatine x
Follow my blog with Bloglovin
