The decadent Lothian bakery that's opened on this historic cobbled main street

The best bakery in South Queensferry has expanded

Dune Bakery has become so associated with South Queensferry that some people have develop-ed a Pavlovian response.

Just looking at a picture of the Forth Road Bridge can make them immediately crave a cruffin.

We’re big fans, especially as the business, which is owned by Lewis Gill, has now expanded into a bigger second location for customers. The original premises at 35b High Street is now used for production, with the new slot at 12-14 Edinburgh Road, which is just five minutes along the stretch, offering a more expansive space for sitting in and taking away coffee and treats.

Designed by commercial interior designers, Splintr, who also created the original Dune Bakery, the fresh space has cherry red banquettes. It also features a reeded glass feature wall that features their logo - a cheery-looking giant croissant with legs and the word DUNE painted across its body.

On the menu, recent specials, which have had their winsome portraits posted on an Instagram account that has over 54k followers, have included a lavish-sounding tiramisu Danish, or another version with banana creme patisserie, sesame cookie, mascarpone vanilla cream, miso caramel and a sesame tuile. Although they’re most famous for their decadent Viennoiserie, purists can still bag a simple croissant or cinnamon bun.

We asked Gill to tell us more about the bakery.

Tell us about Dune's journey so far

It’s been pretty long. I opened my first place called Grams on Edinburgh’s Hamilton Place back in 2016. That was followed by vegan cafe Plant Bae in 2020. Unfortunately, like many other businesses, after Covid, we had to close down, which was a couple of years ago now. We were doing alright but It was basically just debt from Covid that took us out. When it shut I put out a post asking if anyone would be interested in investing in a new venture. I didn’t really expect to hear much, but I had quite a good response and found my business partner who invested in the unit. I had to do a lot of work myself, including painting and plumbing but we got there.

Dune was a fresh start and all those tough years definitely helped mould what we are now. I’ve only really been doing pastry for two and a half years. We are always looking to improve and managed to come second in last year‘s Isigny Sainte-Maire’s Best Croissant in the UK.

Why did you choose the new location?

We are quite limited when it comes to commercial property in South Queensferry. We had secured a location nearby that the council owns but they pulled out just two days before we were due to start work on the place. Even though it was a huge disappointment and the original plan was going to be a much bigger project with food markets and other attractions, we still needed to expand our front of house area, so we found somewhere else instead.

What renovations did you make to the interior?

The new location used to be a chip shop and it hadn’t really been touched in the last 20 years so we had to completely rip out everything and completely start from scratch. If we had managed to get the council building that we’d wanted, the plan was that the old location was going to be the cafe, so we had to completely reverse our ideas. As we used to have up to nine people working in that small space, it is nice that we can split the team in half and work a lot more comfortably across two premises. We can also offer some more seating without losing the views.

Is there more room to sit in as well as takeaway?

We are mostly just continuing what we were doing before, but we have a few more seating options. There is also an extra section that we have yet to open up. Once we have found our feet we will definitely look to do some more interesting things with the space.

How’s it going since opening?

We’re still figuring out how to move our pastries from A to B.

Are you offering anything new, as far as products go?

In the short term things will stay the same but the extra space in the bakery will definitely allow us to experiment more and finally start making bread again.

At the moment we offer a selection of pastries, cakes, focaccia and sandwiches. We are hoping that we can start doing bread again now that we have the space and in the future run some small evening pop-ups to offer things like tacos or pizza slices. We may even do some brunch from time to time. It’s still early doors and we have even more plans. Almost all of our bakers have no pastry experience so, with expanding the team, we need to take some time to train people which is plenty to keep us busy for now.

One of the pretty pastries | Contributed

What are your most popular bakes?

Honestly, people just love anything that’s sweet. We do try and change our specials weekly just to keep things interesting, and everyone’s been very receptive to any unusual offerings that we put on.

How has the food scene in South Queensferry changed since you opened?

I honestly couldn’t say. I think the first time that I saw the original unit was the first time I had been to South Queensferry in about 20 years. I just so happened to walk past it and there was a sign up to say it was ‘to let’. Now I live out here and I love the area. There’s loads of housing being built around here too, so no doubt there will be other great hospitality venues opening to accommodate the population.

For more info on Dune Bakery at 12-14 Edinburgh Road, South Queensferry, follow them on Instagram @dunebakery