Review: Avesta

Has there been a food item so unfairly maligned as the humble kebab? Dismissed by the majority as post-pub cuisine it’s often reduced to homogenous doner meat revolving around a heater and battered into submission by a series of sauces that hide more sins than enhance anything. It’s a million miles away from the Persian classic that’s not only a tasty example of street food at it’s finest, but is damn healthy to boot.

Lisburn Road’s Avesta is so far removed from the row of garish outlets that blight Shaftesbury that we feel bad even mentioning them in the same sentence. Iranian cuisine is a very different beast from the rest of the Middle-East. Traditionally expensive, imported rice was the preserve of the ruling classes, with bread for the common-folk, while the staples of chicken and lamb make up the rest of the meal.

We’re advised that Iranian food is cooked somewhat plainer than what you might expect - the meat gently marinated and then sauce added to personal preference. But when you’ve got chicken wings this good, you really don’t want to add anything.  The charcoal grill and chef’s expertise give us a wing tender in the middle, with a proper blackening on the outside and no sign of toughness at all.

Beef is not something you see very often in a middle-eastern menu, and frankly I’d never thought of adding any sort of citrus flavour when cooking it before. That’s why the grilled ribeye is a revelation. Cooked through and sliced thin, it dances across the tongue.  It’s a definite highlight.

Skewers make up the rest of the menu, ground beef, or diced chicken, and they’re a delicately spiced, morish treat, the sort of thing you wish you could knock up on a summer’s day in the back yard. All of the meat is cooked to perfection, all with a healthy char that many a contemporary  chef would struggle to achieve on one of the high-end, Josper style glory grills.

We’re spoilt with both rice and bread, as well as a selection of vegetable side dishes that round the meal off. The Borani features spinach sautéed in onion and olive oil, and mixed with yoghurt in a light, superfood dish that would cost you the guts of a tenner down the Lisburn Road’s more ‘boutique’ environs, while Olovieh is potato salad that’s died and found paradise.

With a trio of sauces to complement anything, this is food that encourages friends and sees a knife and fork as an unnecessary imposition. Avesta takes one of cuisine’s guilty pleasures and wrestles it back into repectabilty, and has earned a place on our phone’s speed dial for sure.

Shane Horan

Avesta can be found at 124 Lisburn Road. They are open from 16:30 until 03:00 every day. The menu can be viewed online at just-eat.co.uk and find them on Facebook at @Avesta-Belfast.

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