German Gymnasium

German Gymnasium takes its name literally — a 19th-century gymnasium building, built in 1865 as the first purpose-built gym in England, all cast-iron columns and a vaulted glass roof, now carrying a menu of currywurst and schnitzel instead of gym equipment.

It would be easy to assume a restaurant occupying a building this architecturally significant would coast on the setting alone, and for the first few minutes after walking in, it’s genuinely tempting to just stand under the roof and look up rather than think about food at all.

What keeps the restaurant from becoming purely a photo opportunity is a kitchen that’s taken the Mitteleuropean brief seriously rather than treating it as set dressing for the room.

The Room

A genuinely grand Victorian hall split across a Grand Café, an upstairs restaurant, and the Meister Bar, each occupying a different register within the same extraordinary shell. The Grand Café at ground level is the most casual of the three, all-day service under that famous glass roof, busy with a mix of commuters and people who’ve simply wandered in from the station concourse.

The upstairs restaurant is quieter and more considered, better suited to a proper sitting rather than a quick meal between trains. The Meister Bar sits somewhere between the two, a good spot for a beer and a currywurst without committing to either the café’s speed or the restaurant’s ceremony.

What to Order

Currywurst downstairs is the correct order for anyone treating this as a quick stop — properly made, the sauce with real depth rather than ketchup dressed up with curry powder, and served fast enough to genuinely work for a between-trains meal. Schnitzel is the move if you go upstairs for the full menu, pounded thin and fried to a genuine crispness rather than the soggy version too many London kitchens serve under the same name.

The slow-roasted duck is the more ambitious order upstairs, and worth it if you’re staying for a proper dinner rather than passing through.

The Drinks List

A strong German beer list is the obvious strength here — proper wheat beers and pilsners served correctly, in the right glassware, at the right temperature — alongside a broader European wine selection for anyone who’d rather not drink beer with a formal dinner upstairs.

What You Will Pay

Around £40–55 per person, a fair reflection of the food rather than a premium charged purely for the setting. The Grand Café downstairs runs cheaper for a quick currywurst-and-beer visit; the upstairs restaurant with wine pushes toward the higher end of that range, and it’s worth deciding which register you actually want before booking rather than assuming the pricing is uniform across the whole building.

The Verdict

A genuinely handsome room to land in straight off a train, whether you want a quick currywurst downstairs or the full upstairs menu for a proper sitting.

Don’t let the grandeur of the building talk you out of the casual option if that’s genuinely what the visit calls for — the Grand Café does its job just as well as the more formal restaurant does its own, and neither is a lesser version of the experience just because it happens to cost less.

What’s Being Said

Most station-adjacent dining rooms are an afterthought — convenient rather than good, built to catch passing footfall rather than to be a destination in their own right. This one was clearly the point of the building’s second life, not an afterthought bolted onto a heritage restoration, and the kitchen’s commitment to doing proper German and Mitteleuropean cooking rather than a vague “European” menu is what separates it from most restaurants that simply happen to sit near a major station.

That specificity is easy to overlook amid a building this striking, but it’s the reason regulars come back for the schnitzel rather than just the roof — the architecture gets people through the door once, the cooking is what brings them back a second time. This review’s rating settles at a solid four for exactly that reason — the cooking, not the room, is what earns repeat visits.