Latest Reviews
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An absolutely fantastic place to treat yourself with brilliantly brewed beers and enjoy some live music on specific days ! If you want to taste German…
Akanksha Sharma
Katzenjammers
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This place does not even deserve one star. The staff are miserable, the manageress beyond rude...the security are thugs....there is no other word for …
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A busy basement bierkeller, complete with waitresses in traditional Bavarian costume.When we went there were no places left to sit, so we were left aw…
Katrina Hinrichsen
Katzenjammers
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Katzenjammers is open for Casual Dining. Katzenjammers serves German dishes. Incorrect or missing information? Make a report, or claim the restaurant if you own it!Details
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8 Reviews on “Katzenjammers”
This place does not even deserve one star. The staff are miserable, the manageress beyond rude…the security are thugs….there is no other word for it.
A busy basement bierkeller, complete with waitresses in traditional Bavarian costume.When we went there were no places left to sit, so we were left awkwardly standing in the hallway. We eventually managed to share a bench with some strangers and enjoy our dauntingly large and a little pricy Bavarian beers.It’s a fun experience to go there for an after work drink or a little taste of Germany but I wouldn’t make it my regular.
Decent for a post-work drink (though a little pricey) and the decor, staff and live band all play to the German beerhouse theme. But as it’s in a basement, it can get ridiculously stuffy in the summer.
If you’re looking to get repeat business, I wouldn’t recommend following Katzenjammers’ example. We come into the restaurant by virtue of its location – a stones throw from Borough Market, where my friends and I have enjoyed a couple of post-work drinks. Through a humble door and down some steps, the promise of Bavarian food is enough to lure us in.We sit down. The room is large, and filled with chunky wooden tables that sit between heavy benches. White arches curve above. Katzenjammers is bright, but not aggressively so. A waitress comes over, dressed in a traditional dirndl that plays up a little to the overly sexualised Oktoberfest clich. She takes our drink order and, returning with three pints of beer and a large glass of wine (7.30, thankyouverymuch) notes down our food order too.My friends have each ordered sausages and chips, and these come without incident. With little in accompaniment besides sauerkraut, the dishes are successful – if not simply through the difficulty of achieving anything else. The currywursts that my girlfriend and I have ordered, however, bear little resemblance to the concept they supposedly embody – that is, curry. Soho’s Herman Ze German, though not without flaws, understands its product and has created a dish that is both satisfying and true to the original dish. In Katzenjammers, the dish comes has that sort of spiceless-heat that one might associate with supermarket own-brand products. Much like a Tesco madras might be enjoyed without a flinch by a small child, or puppy – but in doing so loses any element of true madras – so Katzenjammers recreates currywurst in only the loosest of senses.Having only previously enjoyed the German noodle dish sptzle at home, my girlfriend and I had eagerly ordered the starter served here as a side dish to our mains. Now, I can forgive the clumsiness of an Englishman who has never encountered the dish mistakenly fluffing the pronunciation – but when a native German orders the sptzle with cheese and bacon and has delivered to her a *pretzel* with cheese and bacon, the blame cannot really be placed on the customer.The sptzle did eventually make it to us – but not before the strangest of things. After perhaps three minutes of eating our meal, the waitress brought us our bill. Two minutes later she came by with credit card machine in hand – we were expected to pay for our meal while we were still eating it. I cannot comprehend why this was the case. Excuses were made that people had been running out without paying recently, but this only served to further the insinuation that the four of us looked untrustworthy somehow. My fellow diners saw the same treatment put to others in the restaurant, but there was still a brutal distrust at play that completely and utterly undermined the dining experience.When the sptzle finally arrived, replacing the curiousity of the cheese-covered pretzel, it was hideously underwhelming. A poor interpretation of macaroni cheese, the long, thick sptzle noodles were unrecognisable amongst a gloopy, near-flavourless cheese sauce and ‘bacon’ that seemed to us like a cheap supermarket ham.Our mains were by no means terrible, but they were poor interpretations of the dishes they aspired to be. Our side was a sloppy mess that could have been defrosted from an Iceland ready meal, and conceived by a chef that had never previously visited Germany. And the insistance that we pay for our meal even though we had barely started eating? An aggressive mood-killer that spoiled the entire experience. swilliamthomas.tumblr.com
Food…. not so good…. Hello, I went to Katzenjammers for w meal and drink with my German friend. The atmosphere was buzzing and was pretty good, you could smell the food on the doorstep. We found some seats and we picked our choices from the menu, but you had to wait for a waiter for a while. After the order plates arrived quickly, but this only meant one: food is not prepared fresh. We started eating and after the first bite we both realised, that we could have made a better meal. I went for pork schnitzel (pork in breadcrumbs), but must say it wasn’t very tasty. I am Polish and my friend is German – we both had much better version of this type of food. Also, the place is so loud, that even shouting it is hard to hear what the other person is saying. It is probably good place for a night out to taste some beers, but they either need to improve their kitchen or just don’t serve it at all. Also, most meals are close to 10.. hmm… I would question that!
Not so good on a Saturday, especially if you’re looking for good music or German atmosphere. It’s almost authentic as an underground bierkeller but the beers isn’t looked after so well. The band were awful & didn’t play German music & didn’t get the crowd going at all, personally the band spoilt it. May be better on another night but I won’t be trying again.
Not so good actually. I have to say that it was a very dreadful experience tonight being out in this restaurant/pub or whatever it was. Getting the bill serverd before the meal was quite a surprise for the whole bunch of 15 people I was there with Overpriced beer (0.5l Augustiner Edelstoff 4.95 GBP, of course a luxury to get it in London) Poor service, who didn’t even aplogize to my complaint.. The dish i ordered was the saussage platter, it looked appalling and has nothing to do with the food I know from my own country. The saussages looked like cooked with a hair drier!! How embarrasing, for me as a German to go out on a night with friends in a place like this. Never again.