Pomelo.

Pomelo

Jun Au opened this room at 23, cooking the hand-ripped noodles he grew up eating at home.

Why go

He had come out of Castle Terrace and the Grain Store, two of the more serious kitchens in the city, and he put that training behind a blackboard and a rack of mismatched chairs.4 He started in a cupboard-sized unit in Marchmont and outgrew it almost immediately, moving by 2023 to this 24-cover site on Sciennes Road, half a mile along the road, into premises that had been Jess Dennison Elliott's southside cafe.2 The Good Food Guide, which knew both rooms, says the new one is only marginally bigger.4 The fine-dining years show up in the borrowing: pineapple-bun dough turned into a fried chicken sandwich, truffle and parmesan onto Korean tteokbokki, maitake set on tofu whipped to a puree. The board is rewritten daily around what is in season. The Asian Catering Federation named him Best Asian Chef in Scotland in 2024, and he has since cooked pop-ups at Argile and at Norah in Newhaven at GBP 65 a head.2 He was also picked for the Great British Menu, representing Scotland.3 The wine is low intervention.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the hand-ripped noodles. Alex Sims found glossy ribbons of moreishly chewy, chilli oil-smothered hand-pulled noodles... fragrant with braised pork, Sichuan peppercorns, soy and garlic.1
• Order: the yuxiang caponata, which Sims called a rich, warmly spiced stew which we lap up with pleasingly squidy slices of scallion-flavoured focaccia.1
• Order: the chef's selection at dinner. It comes as smaller portions of more dishes, and it is Time Out's own tip for the room.1
• Order: the duck if the Good Food Guide's version is running, roasted with kumquats and cauliflower. The guide also found coley under a Cantonese curry.4
• Avoid: counting on the same plate twice. The board is rewritten every day and only one dish survives the rewrite.

What locals & experts say

• Alex Sims, Time Out Edinburgh (December 2025), five out of five: she sets the room against the plate and comes down on the kitchen's side. The snug dining room is packed with mismatched tables and chairs, and the chintzy crockery and blackboard menu all give an atmosphere somewhere between your Nan's living room and a student potluck. The plates served up by the kitchen, however, are anything but twee. Her verdict on the noodles: Food doesn't come more instantly mouthwatering than a heaped bowl of Pomelo's famous noodles.1
• Time Out Edinburgh (February 2026): the review moved it up the city list. Pomelo joined at number 4 as the teeny-tiny Marchmont café serving up mind-blowing hand-pulled noodles, which has earned a place in our top five after a glowing five-star review.5
• The Good Food Guide: rates the room Very Good for uniqueness and for warmth, and lands on the invention. It calls the cooking unique and experimental Asian-themed cooking and notes that Au has widened the menu well past the biang biang noodles that made his name.4
• SLTN (January 2026): the trade paper named the body behind the award. Jun Au was named 'Best Asian Chef in Scotland' by the Asian Catering Federation in 2024.2
• Jun Au, in his own words (The Skinny): asked for the highlight of his year, he answered I won CODE's 30 under 30 and The Caterer's Acorn Award, and Pomelo was listed in the Good Food Guide's 100 Best Local Restaurants. I also competed and represented Scotland in BBC's Great British Menu, which was a surreal experience.3

Good to know

• Hours: closed Monday and Tuesday. Lunch Wednesday to Saturday from noon, brunch Sunday from 11.30am, and dinner on Friday and Saturday only, over two sittings.6
• Booking: lunch is walk-in, dinner and brunch are booked. For lunch they ask you to arrive just before the doors open at noon with your whole party there. A late cancellation, a shrunken party or a missing guest is charged GBP 40 a head.6
• Solo diners: welcome at lunch, refused at dinner. The kitchen states it on its own site.6
• Allergies: they say plainly that sesame, soy and coeliac are beyond what this kitchen can safely handle.6
• Price: the Good Food Guide puts it in the second of its four price bands, below every tasting-menu room in this part of the city. Nobody publishes a dish price for this kitchen, so take the band and the daily board as they come.
• Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates the premises Pass, from a City of Edinburgh inspection on 29 May 2025, with no re-inspection pending as at 4 August 2026.8
• Getting there: Sciennes Road, five minutes' walk south of the Meadows. Time Out still files the restaurant under Marchmont, which is where it started; the address it cooks from now is in The Grange, so aim for the Meadows and walk.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Modern Chinese. Nick nairn rec"
• On the label: it holds, and the kitchen has widened it. The Good Food Guide files the cooking as Asian-themed and experimental, and the plates run from biang biang noodles to a caponata with Sichuan seasoning in it, so the Chinese base is real and the borrowing is deliberate.

Verdict

should-visit — Jun Au opened this room at 23 to cook the hand-ripped noodles he grew up eating at home, and they are still ripped to order, which is why a queue forms on Sciennes Road before the door opens at noon. He outgrew the first room almost immediately and moved half a mile in 2023 into a 24-cover site the Good Food Guide calls only marginally bigger, which tells you what the demand looks like. Alex Sims gave it five out of five in December 2025 and Time Out moved it to number 4 in the city in the January update, on a line about appetite: food does not come more instantly mouthwatering than a heaped bowl of Pomelo's famous noodles. The Castle Terrace and Grain Store years show up in the seasoning, in a Sichuan yuxiang worked through a Sicilian caponata and in pineapple-bun dough turned into a fried chicken sandwich, and the Good Food Guide rates the room Very Good for uniqueness. The Asian Catering Federation named him Best Asian Chef in Scotland in 2024, CODE listed him in its 2025 30 Under 30, and he cooked for Scotland on the Great British Menu. Two things keep it below must-visit. The critical record is one five-star review against a guide that rates the same kitchen Good on deliciousness, and no dish price is published anywhere in the sources, so the value case rests on a band. Dinner also runs two nights a week over fixed sittings and turns solo diners away, so the trek comes with conditions on it.