Lucky Yu — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

Asian inspired or fusions food???

So normally I would avoid this type of food. Being oriental, nothing beats the og food from their countries. But I was invited by guests, so couldn’t say no.

Décor - reminds me of a London hipster vibe. It does feel a bit bare. The neon light illuminance of Lucky Yu does project nicely. This illuminance gives this ambient light glow during the evening service, up lifting the mood, to focus on the food.

Staff – had great knowledge of their menu, with understanding of how the food is prepared and cook. They are very attentive, and happy to help. Great banter, love that the staff took an interest in their punters, even engaging in what we did on the day, and checking out my Lego purchase; guy a legend.

So we had a variant of dish amongst us. Crispy belly pork – the meat was tender with a good fat to meat ratio, the flavour came through and was not over powering. Dark lines on the meat indicate it was grilled. It was dressed with chill peanut crispy sauce. The peanuts was roasted and had a chargrilled taste, with a blend of chilli/chilli oil and Sichuan peppers, garnished with a fresh herbs. Every bite had a lingering burn, but nothing to put you off.

Karage Fried chicken – Good crispy crunch, when biting through. Chicken was tender. Dry to the touch, and not oily. Thought it was air fried, but confirmed it was deep fried. Must have twice fried this to get the good crunch. This was complemented with a side dip of jalapeno & Yuzu Dip. The dip had a creamy, with cooling effect, marrying nicely with the chicken; this reminds me of Mediterranean grill chicken with Greek yogurt. There was a hint of spice; it was difficult to identify where the spice was coming from. Side note – this chicken brought back memories of an amazing restaurant in Kyoto station, it was almost onpar.

Housemade kimchi & sweet potato gyoza (fried) – the gyoza wrapping, I felt was overdone, very hard to the bite. The kimchi overpowered the sweet potato, so you could only tell it was sweet potation from the texture. Chilly sauce dip was added; felt this was unnecessary as the kimchi spice was coming through, adding spice upon spice, kills of the flavour and doesn’t do the dish justice.

Dirty Rice – This was not my dish, didn’t have a good enough spoon full to identify flavours. But cooking elements was interesting. There was a fair amount of oil used to cook this dish, to ensure the rice does not clump/stick together. Rice is long grained, and cooked fresh before it was thrown into the wok.

Brisket bao bun – Another dish that was not my own, could not identify flavours. This was one dish that did not appeal to me. This is not the bao bun you would traditionally find. I know they have slowly introduced this bun into the orient, and they have done some interesting things with it. But this version is odd, just too close to a hot sandwich.

Allot of elements from different regions of the orient, from Japan, Korea, mainland China, and Hong Kong. I’m impressed with the pleather of technics and spices used to prepare each dish, bringing western influence to make it their own. Disappointed there was a lack of variety of oriental beers, that would have gone well with the food and cleansed the plate. Overall, a very good experience. I would consider going back for 1 or 2 items, but they would have the change up the menu to keep it interesting. This is a restaurant worth keeping an eye on, and for those who want to try something new, would...

I’d like to share my Saturday experience at Lucky You. First of all, I should mention that I booked the table last minute and changed my reservation to this place because I had enjoyed it in the past. The name also felt perfect for our special occasion. We were celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary in a simple way—somewhere we could feel cosy and relaxed without dressing up, almost like being at home. The name “Lucky You” felt fun and fitting for that. However, when we arrived, I was already a bit disappointed. The restaurant wasn’t busy at 5:30 pm, yet we were given a table in the second part of the room, which in my opinion is not as cosy as the main area. We kindly asked to change tables, and the hostess offered us a table in the main room but said we could only have it for 1.5 hours. We accepted, thinking that if we wanted to stay longer, we might be offered another table later. Unfortunately, that never happened. Instead of enjoying the full 1.5 hours, we were rushed from around 6:30 pm to leave. Staff kept coming by to clean the table while we still had food on it, which made it impossible to relax. At 6:30 we asked for a dessert menu and waited ten minutes. After asking again, we finally received it, but the waiter immediately told us that for two of the desserts there wasn’t enough time—only one could be served before we had to leave. I was shocked. We spent around £170, yet the service was terrible. I couldn’t simply enjoy the evening. What a shame! After this experience, I definitely won’t be returning. I had hoped for the same cosy, welcoming atmosphere I experienced on my previous visit, but this time the service completely ruined it. In a place like this, good service is so important so that guests feel lucky, not unlucky. If they had simply offered us another table to move to, we would have gladly stayed longer. Instead, it felt like: eat, pay, and leave. That’s not how anyone wants to celebrate their 18th anniversary. I left very...

We were so disappointed with Lucky Yu. After exploring the city, we saved up our appetite to taste the restaurant as it came highly recommended from two places! My friend is Taiwanese, and I’m Chinese American, and we were so excited to see what Lucky Yu brought to the table in terms of an Asian fusion experience.

The service was so sweet and the neon interior reminded me of a night market. The restaurant was quite busy even on a Tuesday night!

We ordered the gyoza, bao, and eggplant off the vegetarian section, and all of it was disappointing. We wouldn’t recommend one thing.

Gyoza: soggy filling, oily, no crunchy bottom. The worst dumplings I’ve ever had. Eggplant: slathered in miso sauce and so salty it was inedible. We ended up eating the inside of the bao and then stuffing the bao with the eggplant Bao: was fine but the bun (rou jia mo) lacked the typical sweet flavor that is characteristic of the bread.

Not only were we disappointed, but we were slightly offended that this was how Asian food was being represented. Neither taste nor texture came through, and we will not be recommending this place (and actually see this more of a horror story) to any of our friends. Hopefully this was just a one off, but we felt so disappointed to end our last day in the city on...