The Other Place

Love going to the other place. I’ve been going here on and off for years and I’ve always found it warm and friendly. The food is reasonably priced and the portions are good sized.

Botanic Avenue is full of choice, you’ve got chip shops, artisan cafés, infamous Mexican eateries and then there’s The Other Place — a place that isn’t quite sure if it’s an old school café or an upmarket eatery. To be perfectly honest we only went to The Other Place because the queues in all the other places were out the door. But I’m glad we went.
This is another café where there’s the element of uncertainty when you enter — do you sit at a booth, do you wait to be seated or do you approach the counter. Here’s your answer — you take a seat and the waiting staff will come and take your order.
The décor is simple — pine booths and traditional posters and Belfast ornaments make up the interior and there’s a decent chilled out playlist creating background noise.
The menu is pretty straight forward. It’s all comfort food really. Lasagne, wraps, fish and chips, burgers, you get the idea. I went for the fish and chips that was chalked up on the specials board (£6.95). The portions are huge — I got a fish that was hanging off the side of my plate. The fish and chips was perfect for what I wanted — just honest food, nothing too fancy. It tasted great and was the hearty lunch I was looking for.
You can’t really go too far wrong with The Other Place — there’s absolutely nothing offensive about it — it is what it is — it’s not trying too hard to be fancy, it’s your bog standard café, what you see is what you get. So if you’re looking for something comforting, or a taste of home go here.

Nice wee café with very friendly staff, good portions and very good prices. I went there after work and expected it to be very busy but there were plenty of seats and service was quick, too. Not the kind of place that blows your mind but perfect to have a chat with friends while grabbing a bite.

Good food, generous portions and nicely decorated little café/​restaurant. I’ve found the staff pleasant and service good. It’s BYOB in the evening. However it’s kind of average overall — good but not great. I also wish they would turn the music down as it’s always far too loud for comfort.

Looking for a bit of grub before venturing into the pub, the missus said we should go to The Other Place, she had been here before and recommended it so that was good enough for me.
Fighting our way through the crowd of smokers at the door, we walked in to find the place nearly empty, a nice young bloke showed us to our booth, just big enough to seat the four of us, the décor is a bit odd, a few phones on the walls, and some old posters, a bit like an 80’s student bedroom but quite agreeable.
The missus went for her usual chicken fillet burger with chips, her mate went for the cajun chicken, her friends beau had the gammon and I had the chicken curry.
The missus loved her burger, she’s pretty fussy and wouldn’t be behind the door in expressing her displeasure but she liked her burger immensely, it was accompanied by a huge amount of gorgeous chips which she had no mission of finishing, her mate’s cajun chicken wasn’t bad, although the sauce seemed to be a little «Uncle Bens» Didn’t stop her finishing it though! The gammon was fine, if a wee bit overdone, once more served with a mountain of the wonderful chips, but the curry was a bit watery, good rice though and some chips, but it went down easy enough and didn’t break the bank.
We all had coke, but we were told that if we went to the offy, we were more than welcome to bring in our own drink.
All in all, I can see us coming back, it was a good start to the night.

I don’t really get why some of my mates like this place. It’s OK, but the last time I was there they were charging a fiver for a baked spud. A fiver. For a potato.
I’ve found the staff to be less than helpful on occasions as well, nothing particularly concrete, just a feeling that they’d rather be somewhere else and don’t mind letting you know it. Food is fairly standard, not something I’d criticise given that ‘fairly standard’ is true of a lot of the places I go to for a quick bite to eat — I’m a simple soul and am usually happy enough anywhere with a toasted chicken sandwich and a pot of tea.
BYO for the evening is always a good addition to any café, and if you get here and it’s not too busy it’s always nice to sit at the window seats and watch the world go by.
A run of the mill café that has nothing particularly good or bad about it. If you’re just looking a coffee though and don’t want to order food, I’d recommend going to the bookshop/​café No Alibis next door instead.

99p fry… yes please and thankyou very much!!!
In my student days a used to go here every thursday morning for a fry with friends. For 99p you would get one of everything, such a good deal! I recall paying more for the coffee than the food!!! Now there is not many places that you can say that about.
The service is sometimes slow as there is usually just one or two people working at any one time, the seating is mostly wooden church type pews hence not the most comfortable. But this place is not without its charms and nostalgia. Definitely a favorite spot for locals and students, I’m not sure if tourist would really see its appeal.
They do have a good amount of choice on the menu from sandwiches to lasagna and what not. If there was an ulster fry map ‘The other place’ should definitely be on it !!!

I was a regular visitor on my hourly breaks from the drudgery of work, when I saw that the place was shuttered up on a Wednesday evening. ‘Gaaaagh!’, I thought. ‘Where am I going to get my twice weekly dose of pasta and ridiculously garlicky bread?’
Thank feck, it was only being closed temporarily and is back doing a roaring trade again. The Other Place has a very varied menu, ranging from all sorts of soups and sandwiches, to burgers, wraps and chillis. But it’s their pasta dishes that do it for me, if I haven’t been lucky enough to have cooked at home for a couple of days (my clan hoover up anything with pasta in it, meaning I know how to make a good carbonara). Lasagne, bolognese.
The aforementioned carbonara makes me happy. I missed you when you were closed, The Other Place. You had me worried for a while!

I used to love this place when I was a student at Queen’s. When the student loan was running out and you’d drunk more than you should have the night before, The Other Place was the ultimate remedy. The fries are substantial, fresh and (most importantly) cheap!
It’s got a nice enough atmosphere about it too, generally chilled out and friendly (probably because 90% of the clientèle are hungover students and just want to flop over and sleep in their baked beans!)

A great laid back place to grab a non-​fussy lunch.
I bloody love BLT’s and they do a mean BLT here. It’s a great place to chill your cats and read the paper for a lazy lunch.
This is one of a few of these branches round Belfast. Inside is all wooden panelling and very welcoming.
The menu is vast and there are tons of things for you to choose from.
They seem to be a good place to get a fry also.
A lovely little place serving no fuss quality food.

Yup Yup Yup.
This is a great place. We strolled in here on Sunday about half 12 expecting it to be fairly slack, in between the late breakfast/​early lunch diners but WOW! Packed like little fishies in a tin with a roll top lid, impressive! Ooo la la! Today I am in a French mood (God knows why I hate them after they blew up the Rainbow Warrior in 1985) magnifique! Tres chic!
Service was quick, but not so quick that you just know the stuff has been sitting under a sunlamp for 2 hours. hot and plentiful which is always a good sign.
Value for money is what you will get here, a cod n chips with peas, rib eye with onion rings and chips and a large sprite and bottled water all for the BARGAIN price of £17.02.
Cant beat that with a big stick

If you like a good big breakfast and bottomless cups of tea and coffee then The Other Place really is the place fr you! This is the place to go for the ultimate cure!(hangover) and they do the greatest breakfasts! The lads always go for the big super fry which frankly I couldn’t manage in just one sitting! And a t the bargain price of a fiver you really cant go wrong! Their lunches are really great too and they always have on daily specials which are great value and really fill a hole. The place has such a warm homely feel and its really clean– not your average ‘greasy’ spoon then! So you don’t smell like chips all day!

Perhaps, as all of my fellow Unilocalers have made reference to, this café is best served with a whopping great hangover. I have been here just the once and as a very rare treat, I did not have a hangover, nor did I have any alcohol the night before.
The décor is dark, almost creepy. We got ourselves a little booth and the lady took our order very quickly. Worryingly, the food was brought out to us almost as quickly as it was ordered, which left me thinking that perhaps my sandwich was not as freshly made as I would have wanted.
Or perhaps they had an amazingly disciplined team that worked quickly and efficiently…
I did not, and probably never will try the £1 fry, for the sake that it is £1. It could just be a great offer, or it could be that the food is so unhealthy that you would be quicker just literally eating the money instead.
Overall it was ok, but I can’t see what sets this apart from pub food.
For me, it is lost somewhere between restaurant and café, and instead of having the best of both worlds, has almost inherited the worst elements of both.
Mediocre

The Other Place is one of a chain of a small chain of café’s (just 3) in Belfast, but the one in Botanic Avenue is particularly distinctive. Even in daylight it’s dark inside, with dark wooden booths and this combined with greasy spoon food is perfect for students nursing a bad hangover; it’s as if it was built with this particular audience in mind. Their best dish are their pancakes w/​bacon: highly recommended! Overall, perfect food, interior and location if you’re suffering from the night before!

A nice, simple, standard wee greasey spoon that will sort you right out for a good breakfast whenever you need something to line the stomach after a night out or to fill you up before you hit the town for a bit shopping.
This place is best known as a bit of a hangover cure den for students who have been out the night before but don’t let that put you off. The staff are friendly and helpful and the food is tasty, filling and not over priced. You go for the breakfast all day, which I always love because I love a fry up. You can also get a bottomless tea which allows you to take your time and fill up on brews and read the paper while you lament the evening before.
That being said, it is never all that busy, loud or intrusive so don’t be put off if you weren’t on the tiles the night before and fancy a bit of breakfast.

This place could be something really nice. Its in a fantastic location in the heart of one of south Belfast’s many bustling student areas. It appears to have a few ideas above its station in my opinion.
Other Place is probably best known for its £1 fry ups which are always taken advantage of by a hungover student or two, or which I can say I was when I went to the Other Place.
When we walked in we just took any seat, its a café, this is usually the protocol. But the waitress came over and stared at us like we had just sat on a bag of kittens and not at a booth. She demanded we moved, a whopping 3 foot to another pretty much identical booth. They outright refused to let us make any alterations to our orders. What really would be the big deal about replacing a sausage with some baked beans? Would it have resulted in the ending of the Café and dare I say, the world?!:O…no it wouldn’t!

Nice coffee shop, opens early and closes late, have been there late into the evening. Their cheesecake and coffee is fab, and their breakfasts are just the ticket to help ease the symptoms of the night before!!!