Esperanto

I do think this extremely popular kebab shop has faced some very heavy criticism here and I don’t really think it deserves quite such a harsh critique.
This place set the tone for the raft of kebab houses across the city now and it’s still standing and still selling greasy minced lamb to the drunk late into the evening.
The pizzas are actually one of the surprises of this little place — sober or drunk they do make them fresh every time and quickly knead dough before sticking into the oven.
Prices are cheap too — a lamb kebab being one of the cheapest right up to a large meat topped pizza.

This is one of the first places I went to after my first night out in Belfast. A friends younger sister, who was a final year architecture student in QUB guided our taxi here after a night out. She knew the place all too well. ‘See that bin across the road? I ate a kebab off that last week’. This girl was a seasoned customer obviously!
It’s a pretty standard kebab shop inside, nothing too posh or indeed too bad. It does the job, which is inevitably a drunken feed! I have never been quite able to bring myself to get a kebab, they just look wrong so I went for a falafel here. It was really, really good I have to say and pretty cheap here. Staff were fine too. A-​okay.

If your kebab ethos is dirtier the better you will love this place. If you are willing to sacrifice everything and go against everything you believe to be true, right and just and still end up with something that tastes like a badgers bum. you may be on to winner.
To my shame I have learned this the hard way… when I was young I thought like a child but now I am older and wise I have a restraining order for myself against this place…
Admist all of this negativity… their pizzas aren’t the worst!!!

Esperanto!!! Ahhhhh! I’ve only been here when I’ve been very desperate and that’s because you’ve a 1 in 3 chance of spending the next day clinging agonisingly to your toilet! As you can see from other Unilocalers reviews, its reputation proceeds itself. The last time I ate there I ordered a mixed kebab. They just picked up bits of precooked meat, which was not stored in anywhere sensible, just under a bright light. They picked up various bits and stuck it in the microwave for about 2minutes. Now I’m not up to date with my Turkish cooking traditions but I’m fairly certain that’s not how it works.

I’m giving Esperanto five stars and having read a few other reviews I think you people are way to harsh.
Think about it folks — you’ve been in Hunters, The Bot, The Egg, The Parlour or The Union and you are drunkenly dragging your sorry ass back to your horrible little student dive off the Lisburn Road when suddenly your brain tells you to eat something in order to keep the hangover at bay.
Where are you going to go?
What are you going to have?
Well it’s pretty damn obvious to me that your drunken legs are going to carry your sorry state into Esperanto’s. And why not, every other drunken student is in there. This place has its place in the world and drunken students mouths is that place.
They serve kebab — a staple of any student night out. They sell chips and coke and pizza and stuff — stuff that will taste amazing at the time but not so good the next day or the day after or the day after as the kebab and onions repeats and repeats and repeats.
You can get all that for a few bob — the change from a Jaegerbomb is enough to fill your face — now could you fail to give this place a top rating.
This place does what it does for the drunks of Belfast as I for one think it does it well. All Hail Esperanto’s!

I am new to Unilocal,and don’t want to start handing out poor reviews for the sake of it, but in the case of Esperantos, I had to make an exception. Also, I can highlight the flaws here, and it won’t matter too much to them because this place is all about one thing: the drunken student pound. And they will have plenty of those again once September rolls around!
The place serves all the usual late night fast food that you would expect: pizzas, chips, burgers and kebabs. Now there is is nothing wrong with those foods done well, but in this place the food is all terrible.
The kebabs taste like they were made of dog meat (not particularly high quality dogs at that) and the burgers are dripping with grease yet similtaneously devoid of all flavour.
If sober, avoid this place like the plague. If you are not however, come on in if you want a place to sit down for a while and hide out from the rain on those long walks up the Lisburn Road from a night out!

Perhaps the other reviewers have some sentimentality towards this diabolical place because it is THE place to get drunken food from. And I too had that sentimentality when I was reading their reviews. I became awash with fuzzy memories of ordering food I simply could not eat and having a conversation with someone I couldn’t focus on about a topic which was probably something to do with Miley Cyrus…
But then the Unilocaler in me kicked in and I have to give an honest assessment of what kind of takeaway this place is because that is my job. It’s dreadful. Shocking. Vile. The food is terrible. Like really terrible. Honestly it is not pleasant at all. Seriously avoid. Sentimentality is all well and good. But getting sick is not. Seriously avoid.

This place is a bit of a landmark on the drunken walk home for many students in Belfast and as a drunken kebab shop it pretty much does the job.
The kebabs and chips are ok, that is to say they are warm, fill you up and have never made me throw up directly after so I don’t think you can ask for much more than that at 2am. It is a bit out of the way but is on lots of people’s walk home so expect it to be busy but I have never had any trouble in it. The staff are dead on enough and they always give you a big enough portion.
It’s a slightly mute point recommending a particular dish, but if you just order a kebab, chips and a can of coke you won’t go too far wrong.

Superb! Stuff of legend in Belfast, best kebabs in the world. Place looks grotty but food makes up for it! Studenty place not for familys or food snobs.

Best place ever for a post-​night out feast.
Desperantos as it’s known in the student community is a legendary place all former Queens students look back on fondly.
Can personally recommend the garlic chicken kebab with chips. Only trouble is the aftertaste in the morning coupled with your hangover!
Only problem with this joint is that there are no toilets.

I think the only reason this place is popular is because it is one of the few chippies that is open a bit later and since it is a slightly longer staggering distance for those in need of a chaser then the crowd that surge to it have had a bit of a walk to sober up, so they are less likely to exhale a pint in your face and challenge you to a duel.
That said, it is just average late-​night food. It’s not bad but it is usually just the back-​up if nowhere else is open.