Queens

With simple, regularly changing menus to showcase the best seasonal ingredients available at market, you can expect carefully prepared plates of stylish food at this equally chic wine bar and bistro tucked away on a “secret” jigger just off bustling Castle Street.

On the dinner à la carte, think big hunks of meat refined: Barnsley lamb chop with Swiss chard and aioli, say, or pork ribeye with crushed potatoes, charcuterie sauce and hazelnuts. Fish is also a feature: whole plaice is teamed with capers and brown butter for dinner and with confit tomato and anchovy sauce for lunch; cod is roasted and given an aubergine puree bed to lie on in the evening, turned into kedgeree with soft poached egg and petits pois during the daytime, and served as beer-battered fish and chips with sauce gribiche (a kind of eggy take on tartare) on Sundays.

Starters are equally imaginative and pretty on the plate, with the likes of duck hearts on posh toast, white bean hummus with toasted almonds, and cured trout with fennel and apple salad. Desserts are firmly in the classics camp: crème brûlée, for example, and a malt and dark chocolate tart elegant with its Chantilly quenelle.

Wine bar by name, wine bar by nature, and, as you might expect, Queens stocks a mostly old world wine list, with some good bottles (a Crémant fizz and a French Chablis in the whites, Gamay in the reds) at some pretty good prices.