SUCK IT UP Regulars at Queen-Albert’s Diner & Lounge sip Kahlúa concoctions.

PHOTOS: MIREYA ACIERTO

After nearly two decades in medical services, Belinda “Bel” Loyola opened Queen-Albert’s Diner & Lounge (3506 W Irving Park Rd, 773-267-8700) six years ago. She named the bar after the English sovereign Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert—role models of strength and independence for Bel and her husband, Oscar.

But Q-A’s is stocked with the less-than-regal basics: tables, chairs, a few dusty oil paintings. A red-and-white rope light divides the front bar area from the back lounge. The Santo Niño, a replica of a divine image of the infant Jesus believed to bring good luck, sits next to some cocktail glasses. The bar doesn’t advertise, but the good word’s gotten around. As friends, and friends of friends, walk in, Bel holds court up front while Oscar sits down for a family-style dinner with pals in back.

Two middle-aged Filipino men sip Coronas at the bar, eyeing ESPN. Two more guys, one Filipino and one not, pore over the menu—they split an order of fish balls and each drinks a few San Miguels, the Philippines’ most popular beer. But the bar’s karaoke system is the big draw for young Filipinos. While traditional Filipino love songs are never off the menu, the most popular ditties are American, power ballads by the likes of Journey, and R&B by Toni Braxton and Stevie Wonder.

A young Filipino couple gets ready to sing. Jonathan Shauf, 27, flips through the songbook, fidgeting with his green baseball cap. Marianna Panganiban, 27, enjoys a cold beer, smoothing her short hair. She’s at Q-A’s two or three times a week. Shauf hits the dance clubs, but always makes his way back here, too. “I’ve been coming here for about five years now,” he says. “Back [when I started coming here], you’d probably see 20 people on a Saturday.”

Now, the bar is packed every weekend. Things jump off around 10:30, when packs of twentysomethings pause between turns at karaoke to take group pictures. Older blue-collar folks unwind with San Miguels and plates of sisig and lumpia Shanghai (see “Pub-grub glossary: pulutan”).

If business is this good, why is Q-A’s the only Filipino bar in the city? Bel shrugs, “In this ward, there are the liquor-license moratoriums. I was lucky to get it!” Here, unlike at bars in the Philippines, there are no tables of men taking shots from a communal bottle of gin and singing (the closest thing to a Filipino drinking tradition). But there’s no trouble, either—fights stop before they begin. “People come here to sing, to have a good time. Troublemakers? They’re out of here,” Shauf says. Bel comes over to say hello to him and Panganiban, patting his shaved head playfully. It’s time for Shauf to sing; he goes with Stevie Wonder’s “Knocks Me Off My Feet.”