Red Box

This noodle bar is minutes away from Edinburgh University’s main George Square campus, as well as the Teviot, Pleasance and Potterrow student unions, so it’s popular with students during term, and Fringe-festival punters during the summer.

The two main attractions are the fast service and filling dollops of noodles - available as noodle soup or noodle boxes. Tailor-make your order from a selection of ho fun, ramen, udon, egg or rice noodles, then add duck, vegetables, tofu, pork, chicken or beef. Throw in three bits of colour and roughage, from a vegetable mix that includes pak choi, sugar snap peas, onions, water chestnuts and more, customise things with options of chillis, spring onions or coriander, and finally pick from one of the ten sauces, including Thai red curry, black bean sauce and Singapore powder. One of these white, fold-up Chinese takeaway boxes filled to the brim will set you back an overdraft-friendly £5.60. Dim sum options (salt and pepper squid, chicken satay skewers, dumplings, prawn toast amongst others) are a reasonable £2.70 each, although sweet options are limited to fortune cookies (£1).

Fast and filling, but sometimes light on the sauce - rather than scooping on lashings of the stuff, it tends to be more of a trickle. A speedy online delivery service is available too - good to know when you’re loath to leave the studying (or DVD boxset) long enough to make something to eat.