Topolo’s and Lazeez

Ive ordered a few times from here and I’ve never had any problems at all. In fact it’s on my top 10 best takeaways well recommended guys :-)

Lazeez & Topolos is one of them peculiar places. My miiiinds tellin’ me no. but my body, mah bodys tellin’ me yeh ayeaahh. The place is a dump, the chips arrive soggier than my mum at a Tom Jones Gig, and the meat (I only have what I hope is the Chicken) isn’t something I would feed my dog.
But, and my god this is a big but. If I have a cheeky fiver, and i need my pretty little self a Calzone or a Biryani, I can’t help but pick the phone up, banish my principles away with the curly phone cables and bent thumb pins, in that strange draw we all have and cry my order down the phone to the (usually) Delightful chap on the other end. Perhaps it’s the dehydration from the tears of indignity, perhaps it’s just a curse put upon me by them folk in the city centre with gatherings of lavender. I simply don’t know, but I do order from here from time to time, and it troubles me to say it, but I don’t half enjoy it.
Cheap and cheerful, with confines on the cheerful. Give it ago it might surprise you, or just have you and your toilet slow dancing to the fragrant sound of a stomach churning symphony.
They do say variety is the spice of life.

this is one of the best takeaways in leeds a couple of years ago this takeaway was below adverrage but in the last 6 months or so topolos has been outstanding the kebabs are to die for and the pitta bread is grilled to perfection the chips are golden and crispy but not burnt and the chilli sauce has a kick to it infact when your eating it you cant taste any hot however 10 miniutes after youve finnished you will be running for the water.

Me and a friend recently did the unthinkable — eat a donner kebab while sober. We chose Lazeez’s as the place to try this risky endeavour, and soon wished we hadn’t.
A dirty interior and waiting area made you wonder about the hygiene standards of the food (you think about this stuff a lot more when not drunk y’know) and the taste of our kebabs when we got them after a short wait did nothing to allay our fears. They didn’t have the traditional meat-​carving-​spinning-​machine-​thingy and the meat thus tasted a little bit rubbery and almost unauthentic (if there is such a thing as an authentic donner kebab). The chips, salad and sauces were perfectly fine, but we spent the aftermath wondering where they’d got the meat from, and it soon made us feel a wee bit queasy. I probably won’t be returning here.
Maybe I’m being a little unfair. We were, after all, sober.

It was on the back of a trusted personal recommendation that I decided to sample a Topolo’s kebab.
The chilli sauce, I was told, was savoury and spicy and unlike chilli sauces sold in other local establishments. With this in mind I ordered a large doner with chilli sauce and salad, an extra pot of chilli sauce, a pot of yoghurt/​mint sauce (as is the custom in Leeds, no garlic sauce) and a portion of fries.
The fries, incidentally, were undercooked. While this has no bearing on the kebab review, it certainly didn’t bode well for the rest of the meal
I personally found the chilli sauce a little too harsh, a little too sweet and, if I hadn’t ordered an extra pot, I’d have found the sauce too sparsely applied also. That said, the extra pots of sauce came in generously deep containers and at just 30p each I can have few complaints.
The yoghurt mint sauce was standard fare with nothing to distinguish it from those of rival outlets
The salad was a little anemic, but the onions were both generous and crisp, if a little too thickly sliced
Had the meat been even average, this would have been a perfectly respectable and tasty kebab, unfortunately the meat had many, many faults
The lack of a kebab machine on display left me initially dubious as to the quality of kebab I could expect. I’ve long suspected that certain takeaways who serve donor meat don’t necessarily have a donor kebab grill and they buy ready sliced kebab meat which they warm through prior to serving
My experience at Topolo’s galvanised my suspicions
True to form, the meat was sliced too thickly. What I can only describe as huge greasy pale wedges of doner meat made up the body of the kebab. An ominous ‘ping’ of a microwave oven preceeded my order by about 2 minutes, just about the time it would take to assemble a kebab, I suspect
Without the sauce the meat was bland, great big slimy bland hunks of meat, it may as well have been boiled. The chilli sauce masked any deficiencies in the meat’s flavour, but texturally it remained rubbery and slimy. If you were to boil a tin of spam, slice it into 2 inch thick wedges and pour cooking oil over it, you’d experience something similar to a Topolo’s kebab
On the plus side, it was a generously proportioned kebab and at just £3 very good value for money (£5 inc. fries and extra sauces), but it was barely edible. The pitta bread was burnt and the shop itself felt a little dingy
Will I ever get a kebab from here again? No chance. Nor will I ever order anything from here again. There’s many a fine kebab to be found in North Leeds, but not at Topolo’s