£10 Challenge: friendly restaurant providing food from Lebanon, Morocco Iran and Saudi Arabia

Rating
4

Pomegranate’s purple door has been tempting for too long. At last, R. and I got round to dining there as part of EdinburghGuide.com’s £10 Challenge. The décor of raspberry, cerise and bright pea green with pistachio walls split by a dado rail and bright beaded cushions with shisha pipes set a pleasing and cheering atmosphere in this friendly restaurant serving dishes from Lebanon, Morocco Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The special lunch menu that runs from Monday to Thursday offers a range of mezze dishes and we plumped for the choice of five mezze to share for £18. Two of the mezze dishes were to be hot but from a generous menu we both wanted the same hot dish of Hummus Shawarma which is lamb fillet strips on smooth chick pea hummus. To share, we chose Batata Harra which is fried diced potato in coriander, chilli and garlic, Tabbuleh which is parsley, tomato, spring onion and bulgar wheat and Dolma – marinated vine leaves stuffed with aromatic rice.

The lamb was plentiful and flavoursome though some of the strips could have been leaner and it sat on a generous bed of smooth, tangy hummus that could be mopped with the flat bread that comes with the meal. The Tabbuleh was bright and fresh, with that lovely cleansing feeling to the palate though there was little evidence of any tomato in our portion, but that may have been the luck of the ladle. The Dolma was served with a token salad and was a perfect complement to our choices – tender, tasty and colourful.

Turkish tea is too hard to resist after a Middle Eastern lunch so we ordered cardamom tea which came in traditional tulip glasses and was the perfect digestif. The Turkish Delight we ordered as a sweet treat to accompany it was gorgeously soft and delicious. That tipped us a bit beyond the £10 budget but that was a personal choice. The lunch itself was more than adequate.

Pomegranate offers BYOB with free corkage and has an area downstairs where diners can sit in the alcove style rooms and enjoy a shisha. There is also a new private Arabic dining room which looks exotic with its Persian carpeted seats and low tables that is available for parties.

The friendly, efficient staff made this visit a particular pleasure. It is worth saying ‘open sesame’ to the culinary treasures of Pomegranate.