The Sunday lunch menu at The Queens promises comfort – roast beef, gravy, Yorkshire pudding, mash and roast potatoes – comfort that only works if you can swallow it.
Light floods in from the terrace, across the tiled floor and curved sweep of a backlit bar with a black polished counter. Further inside, the dining area shifts to something cosier. Navy-buttoned banquettes line the walls beneath nautical wallpaper – sailing boats and seascapes, a nod to its coastal Dublin setting.
The menu is a sprawling hybrid of pub comfort food, steakhouse staples, and upmarket seafood, with a few earnest gestures toward seasonality. Clearly, it wants to keep everyone happy – which is no bad thing – burgers for the casuals, roasts for the traditionalists, and lobster cakes for anyone hoping to feel they’ve “treated themselves”. Prices sit in the €20–€25 bracket for most mains – squarely mid-to-upper gastropub territory – with desserts uniformly at €9.
The starters mix crowd-pleasers (Buffalo wings, calamari) with a token refined option (duck liver parfait). The mains veer between the expected (chicken supreme, fish and chips) and butternut squash rigatoni for vegetarians. The seafood section aims high – lobster, crab claws, dressed crab. The roast section is safest: familiar, well-priced, and likely the anchor of the day’s trade.
READ MORE
The wine list has a decent range of options, most hovering in the €35–€45 bracket, and a handful of cocktails – hibiscus sours, limoncello blooms, infused margaritas. We order a sparkling water (€3.80) and a Guinness (€6.60).
The roast Irish beef (€24) looks the part, if well-done meat is what you ordered rather than rare. Two thick slices fanned neatly over mash, a roast potato tucked in, and a jug of gravy. But the moment your knife meets the meat, the illusion drops. It’s overcooked, grey through the centre, the texture less “tender slice of Irish beef”, more lukewarm leather armrest from an old church pew – polished by time, resistant to cutlery, impossible to forget once you’ve chewed it. This should be the star turn – the Sunday benchmark – but the beef is tired and joyless, like it was cooked quite a while before our 1pm booking.
The rest of the plate does its best to make up for it. The mash is smooth, the roast potato cooked through and the Yorkshire pudding holding its shape with a rubbery rather than crispy texture. The cabbage and carrots, served in a little copper pot, are piping hot.
The roast venison (€26) is a welcome correction after the beef – cooked to a true medium, tender and moist at the centre, with a clean gamey depth that suits the season. The meat comes in small chops, still on the bone, their edges caramelised and slightly crisp, accompanied by the same mash, roast potato and selection of vegetables.
The fish and chips (€21) arrive on a patterned plate that looks almost too elegant for pub fare. The cod is a long, generous fillet, its batter golden and puffed in ridges – the kind of crispness that shatters rather than crunches. The fish inside is tender and bright, perfectly cooked, pulling away in large, translucent flakes.
The chips are skinny and hot, served in a separate bowl, and a small salad brings colour: a tangle of leaves with diced tomato and a drizzle of dressing. It’s a classic, well-executed plate.
And then dessert. The peach and coconut panna cotta (€9) is one of the most bizarre finales to a meal I’ve had in years. It’s on a large white plate – a pink ring of syrup circling a white disc in the middle, a few diced peaches and a quenelle of sorbet perched on top. But what follows is absurd. The coconut “panna cotta” is a solid slab with the texture of fondant icing, no wobble, no creaminess, just a sugary standoff.
[ Irish chef’s restaurant ranked 20th in North America’s Best Restaurants listOpens in new window ]
The syrup – a violently pink moat – is eye-wateringly sweet, a medicinal blast of fruit that tastes like Calpol with a touch of chilli. The lime and mint sorbet is decent but has no business being here. It’s as if three unrelated desserts met by accident on the same plate and decided to stay for the photo.
The Queens, in the end, is the culinary equivalent of that roast beef – handsomely presented, steeped in tradition, and cooked far past the point of tenderness. You don’t leave hungry, but you do leave wondering why, with all its history, light and confidence, it can’t quite bring itself to serve something worth the second bite.
Dinner for three with two drinks was €90.40.
The Verdict: Roast beef like upholstery, dessert like science fiction.
Food provenance: Robinson Meat; fish from Bunagee Pier, Culdaff and Greencastle, Donegal.
Vegetarian options: Rigatoni in butternut squash cream; vegan burger; roasted pumpkin and burrata, pear, roast beetroot and goats cheese.
Wheelchair access: Fully accessible with an accessible toilet.
Music: The Cardigans to Frank Sinatra and Latino Beach House.
