Restaurant Review - Queen Stop
Tuesday 08 July 2025
Coasting along past a strip of shops on the Upper Rathmines Road in a taxi on the way to the new Queen Stop Chinese restaurant in the centre of Rathmines, I was reminded that Kevin Thornton, one of the best chefs this country has ever produced, had opened his first restaurant – The Wine Epergne – there in 1990. Five years later he moved on to bigger things and enormous success with his eponymous Michelin-starred restaurant in Portobello, and subsequently on St Stephen’s Green, before it sadly closed it 2016.
I’m always slightly mesmerised that despite all the wealth in the D6 redbrick houses down the years, which even inspired the legendary Jimmy O’Dea’s panto song Thank Heavens We Are Living in Rathgar, it’s always been a bit of a dining desert, the streets lined principally by fast-food restaurants and takeaways. Are these posh people really that careful with their cash, or do they just head for the bright lights and Michelin stars in town?
lucindaosullivan.com
First Published In The Sunday Independent