Queen Bee Roma is a new restaurant with a huge menu which manages to achieve a truly difficult task: offering vast choice, without skimping on the quality of the ingredients and the finished product.
The sign over the door sets up its ambitions. Queen Bee Roma specialises in pizza, burgers and lobsters, and as soon as you enter, you encounter a cocktail and champagne bar to boot.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that there are plenty of restaurants and bars in town which try to do just one of these things well and fail miserably. Pizza is an art form – we’re in Rome, so you can’t get away with serving bad pizza and expect the customers to come back. The same goes for burgers – there’s been a huge explosion in burger bars over the last five years in the capital, and people are rightly getting really picky about the bun, the meat, the filling, and even the alcohol pairing.
As for lobster and champagne, well, a kitchen really needs to know what it’s doing if it’s going to offer these two luxury products, as if they mess it up, the cost of these two ingredients alone will drive them out of business.
Queen Bee Roma: the review
On my visit to Queen Bee Roma I didn’t know what to expect. The restaurant has been put together in a truly cavernous space which still manages to be warm and convey character in a series of rooms which used to be a bank premises. The bar at the front is lovely and welcoming, with an invite to help yourself to quality snacks – vegetables lightly fried in tempura. I also struck up an immediate rapport with the bar staff, who were probably just doing that barista thing, but made me feel immediately welcome.
On seeing the huge menu I was in a bit of a quandary, but thankfully my party was game to try a large range of dishes, so we could sample all of the highlights. While we waited for our drinks – there’s an impressive wine and cocktail menu, a few craft beers on tap and plenty more in bottles – we were served some pizza to snack on, made from an excellent 5 cereal dough.
Fritti, Italian deep fried goodies, are a staunch item on many menus for good reason. But the fried items here also offered something out of the ordinary – a chicken finger, in a cereal encrusted batter, plus a very good cacio e pepe suppli.
We sampled a cheese and charcuterie platter before getting stuck into another round of pizzas, which are served in both regular white and wholegrain format. What a delight to find a wholegrain pizza with a wonderfully nutty taste, without being overpowering, while remaining extremely light on the stomach.
Next up, a tris of mini burgers, probably the least impressive item I tried but notoriously difficult to get right, as the bread buns can often overwhelm the tiny burgers. The chips were good though.
The dinner proceeded with a lobster burger, truly one of the stars of the show at Queen Bee Roma, served in a wonderfully soft brioche bun, getting the right balance between creaminess and meatiness.
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Fortunately, we had left a little bit of space to try a few desserts – cheesecake, a nicely bitter tiramisu, and a good brownie. Then, just to round things off – a rare gem for Rome – a rather good red velvet cake.
Hard to say which course was better done, although the pizza and lobster burger were exceptional (I generally prefer savoury over sweet).
The location’s great, right in one of Rome’s most charming quarters, just a couple of minutes from Campo de’ Fiori and Largo di Argentina. On this, first impressive showing, I will most definitely be back for another meal at Queen Bee Roma and would happily recommend it.
Via del monte della farina 23 | 06 6880 2824 | Facebook
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