Restaurant Review: Star of Kingston

The Star of Kingston is just east of Kingston and Woodbine.  It is situated beside a real estate office, convenience store and an architect's office. That is to say, it is a local restaurant.

It is small, literal hole in the wall.  There are very few tables and that seems to discourage people from eating inside.  The kitchen is tiny which means that you can see everything that the ex-Ruth Chris' cook is doing.

Some prep is done by microwaving (rice) and most food has to be preprepared and fired to order.  It is a joy to watch him bang out the dishes as he goes along.  While we were there, 11 orders were done in this small and barely adequate kitchen.

The menu is eclectic and  reaches all over the place from Italy to India to Canada.  The food is way better than it has to be but it can be uneven.  For example we ordered a pizza and the toppings were excellent but the crust was one of the pre-made varieties.  Some of the items such as fries are not great but are done better than most.  There is a mild spicing to most things that underlie the food.  The pastas we have had are all decent pastas with a delicate Indian spicing, and the chicken parm was pounded just before cooking.  I kinda like this place for its hutzpah.

While I have some reservations, it is good to have a varied menu, especially for a restaurant that serves families.  There was a cranky night after many long nights, our one son wanted burgers and the other wanted Indian.  We found a place that did all that and Italian, too.  My only suggestion would to pare down the menu a little bit.  It may be possible to find a way of prepping so that ingredients can serve two purposes such as using the spiced beef as both a burger and a kofta.

It is hard to see someone work so hard and have some of the little things let the menu down.  It would be too much to ask for a place like this to serve homemade.  Because you can see the work that goes into the kitchen and really appreciate the price, it seems unfair to criticize without offering a little bit of support. The Star of Kingston is better than it has to be for the price.  You can see by the menu and the few flashes of really tasty things that this guy has the chops to make a really good menu.  There could be Indian spiced chicken wings, wings with regular sauce, butter chicken with pasta but the restaurant is locked into a struggle between serving the regular customers in the area and shining.

This is the germ of a gem of a restaurant and we will be going back or ordering again.