Blue

One of the less hateful of the Albert Docks clubs, the Blue Bar is better experienced early on in the night when its stone-​flagged floor isn’t painfully cluttered with punters and you don’t have to measure service time with a calendar.
As a dockside bar, the drinks don’t come cheap, but if you’re celebrating an event or simply found out its pay day, there are worse places you could find yourself in, such as Circo or lying face down in the muddy silt of the riverbank.

Blue Bar and Grill is a stylish venue. Blue has a café bar with lounge seating and an outside terrace area. Blue serves freshly prepared food, with an enterprising range of dishes.
There is a balcony overlooking the waterfront, and a glass façade facing the city centre skyline.
The menu’s include a la carte, bar, kids, bistro and pre concert.
Every friday there are live performances from the regions future vocal superstars.

The Blue Bar + Grill is tied very closely to The Albert Dock and where it stands within Liverpool. Once The Dock and Blue in particular would attract all the VIP names visiting the city or the footballers and models living in the adjacent apartments. It no longer has the same exclusivity it once did and has become slightly stale.
When the sun is cracking the flags, or dazzling brightly off the river as it was today, then the place can still attract those wanting a glass of beer or champagne in the sunshine and at a weekend they may even stay on into the evening. The food is pretty good here and for main courses between £11 — £18 it’s not bad value.
However it takes someone very keen to venture down to this part of town in winter and pay the prices at the bar when the wind is whipping off the Mersey! Town is a fickle place with regards what is ‘in’ and where the crowds are going and Blue is in a place more for seasonal visits although its regular comedy night is an all year round event worth checking out.

According to the website, this bar has «recently undergone a major refurbishment» — although I’ve not noticed any outstanding differences over the years I’ve been here. Maybe they’re replaced the furniture to make it more relaxed and ‘loungy’ to try and shy away from the stigma of the Albert Dock bars. You see, Albert Dock bars, as far as I’ve been concerned, were the places for wannabe WAGs to hang out before there was such a thing as a WAG. I’ve always thought they were consciously pretentious, but Blue isn’t that bad.
Obviously, timing is everything. To go at mid-​afternoon is to be surrounded by ladies-​wot-​lunch and business meetings. To go at night is to be surrounded by waifs in designer gear leafing through the cocktail menus. However, the atmosphere is nice, and if you go early evening you will no doubt get excellent service and enjoy the views over the docks in relative relaxation.
My recommendation is to go on a night when the adjoining club, Baby Blue, is hosting a comedy night. Get there nice and early for drinks, go upstairs for dinner (the set menu is limited but ticks all boxes) and then down to Baby Blue for the comedy. After that, it’s your choice whether to WAG it out in the docks or head into the more central area. Or you could, of course, just go home…