Restaurant review: Queenies in Kingston is not your average neighbourhood bar

Sashimi with native ingredients? I guess Queenies isn't just your average neighbourhood bar after all.

While unassuming from the outside, the venue is beautifully eclectic inside. A backlit art deco bar stands out against an unfinished brick wall and a couple of converted green train seats and a funky touch. There's a covered outdoor area, too, and a private dining room for special functions.

Cocktails are themed after iconic women - Stevie Nicks, Emily Davison, Hedy Lamarr. Combined with a name like Queenies and a female head chef, there's a definite nod to strong women here. I like it. A good reason to order a second cocktail named after a kickass lady, I think.

They're well-made cocktails, too - habanero-infused tequila, house-made grenadine, Aperol, cucumber, lime and hellfire bitters for instance. If wine or beer is more your thing, the selection here is focussed on the local. For teetotallers, a selection of artisan soft drinks abound.

If you're feeling peckish, choose from share plates like Bangkok popcorn chicken ($16.50), hand cut chips with Australian native togarashi ($12) or crispy eggplant with fermented chilli dip and sesame ($14.50). For the hungrier, there's a set menu ($75). Whichever you opt for, there are lots of vegetarian options here - and not token ones either.

There's a distinctive Asian flair in dishes at Queenies, along with an emphasis on native Australian ingredients. Here, scallop ceviche is reinvented with finger lime and samphire, while sambal salsa adds gentle warmth and a nostalgic throwback to my childhood in Malaysia. Dishes are beautiful, too. The accompanying rice cracker is thin and lacy, like fabric billowing in the wind.

My favourite dish of the night is salmon sashimi served with watermelon radishes, mounds of green avocado peeking out from the sea of pink. It's finished with white ponzu, red desert dust and a liberal sprinkling of crispy tempura batter. The complex layering of flavour and texture is what I find so clever in the food here. In this dish, there's a kick of chilli and saltiness from fish roe that packs a punch, and creaminess from avocado contrasting with the freshness of good sashimi.

Another highlight; the braised kangaroo. Here, piles of pull apart tender meat sit in a lightly spiced broth with caramelised carrots and crunchy golden garlic chips. It's earthy but surprisingly light with a comforting level of spice throughout.

There's some really interesting food being cooked at Queenies. A dish of twice-cooked duck is unexpectedly chilled. It's served on a mound of cold carrot puree with native berry barbecue and a crisp shard of duck skin barqueron. Noodles in an inky black Napoletana sauce is delicious, too - though the noodles are cooked a little softer that I'd normally like.

Grilled cos lettuce, miso bagna cauda, wattleseed is also clever. The contrast of smoke works well against the freshness of cos, and a buttery miso bagna cauda and crunchy pepitas tie the whole thing together.

The only dish I'm a little confused by is the mountain of green beans with desert lime and almond. It's perfectly fine, but a little tokenistic and perhaps out of place alongside other stellar dishes.

A hater of both cheesecake and caramel, I'm pleasantly surprised by the riberry cheesecake with miso caramel - something my partner orders and I quickly steal. Miso adds a lovely savouriness and a soft but lingering umami-ness, reinvigorating a dessert I normally don't care for. The other option is a desert lime cremeaux with honeycomb and chocolate sable.

As bars go, drinks here are great. As restaurants go, the food here is excellent - interesting, inventive and polished. If anything, it's the experience that's a little amiss tonight - we are moved around three different tables and asked a total of six times (in the space of 10 minutes) if we'd like to order drinks, yet when we try to get the bill it's hard to get the attention of staff. Service seems to teeter between overly attentive to almost forgotten, but maybe that's just the bar aspect of the venue.

Still, service notwithstanding, I'm really quite smitten by what's on offer at Queenies. The food is modern Australian in the best possible sense - taking the best of Australia's multicultural history and pairing it with an emphasis on native ingredients. I see the menu has changed since I've eaten there a few weeks ago, so I might just have to pop in again just to check out what else is cooking.

Address: 26 Giles St, Kingston ACT 2604

Phone: 6174 4096

Website: queeniesatkingston.com.au

Hours: Monday to Wednesday, 4pm to 11pm. Thursday, 4pm to midnight. Friday to Saturday, noon until midnight. Sunday, noon to 10pm.

Owner: Nick Driver, Ben Johnston and Kalina Koloff

Chef: Adrianne De Jesus-Davo

Vegetarian: Lots of options, from bar snacks to full set menu

Noise: Not too bad, given its also a bar

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