Queens, another Pilgrim satellite (along with Property of: Pilgrim, The Standard, and Bright Eyes) opened last week in the former Crumb Street Kitchen site on the corner of Harrington and Melville Sts, selling pastries – baked in-house, natch – and coffee of the excellent standard we’ve come to expect from this outfit. The name, incidentally, was chosen to be monosyllabic and memorable, and as a nod to the women of the hospitality industry.

The space itself has undergone a radical revamp. Gone is the rough-and-ready Crumb Street aesthetic, replaced with sleek white tiles, blonde wood, and pastel teal. Seating is limited, and elegantly functional rather than comfortable; this doesn’t seem like a place to linger, but it’s certainly a pleasant spot to grab a coffee and a quick, indulgent bite to eat during a busy day, or a treat to take home (or, let’s be honest, a treat to sneakily eat in the car on the way home so you don’t have to share it with anyone). A hatch window gives you a peek at the kitchen, if you can manage to look away from the cake cabinet.

The staff are friendly and knowledgable, cheerfully reeling off the contents of said cake cabinet (there were three different kinds of banana bread, including a gluten free option; three muffins – two sweet, one savoury; gingerbread men; chocolate croissants and the scattered crumbs of the vanished plain croissants; chocolate brownie, and two types of eclair) and look, okay, yes, I had an eclair for breakfast. Don’t you judge me. The matcha flavoured filling was a tiny bit overcooked and grainy, and I will always prefer ganache over white fondant icing in an eclair context, but the blueberries gave it a lift and I’ll definitely give them another go (such is my dedication to this blog, and to science). The chocolate croissant I tried on their soft opening day the week before was a perfectly delicious example; deeply browned, with beautifully laminated layers of yeast dough and butter. They also do ‘cruffins’, a terrible name meant to indicate a cross between a croissant and a muffin; ordered in spite of this, it turned out to be a decadently buttery scroll of croissant pastry wrapped around a heart of Nutella-flavoured custard.

If, unlike me, you can’t get there in time for breakfast, FEAR NOT. Thanks to a staggered baking schedule, the cake cabinet is replenished throughout the morning, and there is the promise of afternoon donuts in the near future. Yes.

It’s early days, but Queens seems an admirable addition to Hobart’s dining landscape, and I hope we see more venues bridging the gulf between the CBD and the North Hobart restaurant strip (both of which will surely reach some sort of Cafe Event Horizon soon). Check it out if you’re in the mood for something short and sweet, and in the mean time peruse their Instagram for an idea of what’s on offer.

Queens Pastry

144 Harrington St, Hobart