Our Many Moons of Honey: Food in our 4th Moon

Of course we must finish off our Nepal posts with a little on the eating we did (here it finally is Stro!). There are four types of foods to be found in Nepal: Nepali, Tibetan, Indian and Chinese. There are restaurants that are strictly Nepali or Tibetan while others offer all four cuisines as well as continental which consists of pizza and spaghetti Bolognese. Most Hindi Nepalese are vegetarians, some by choice and others out of necessity. In the Kathmandu Valley, however, the Newars are big meat eaters with buff (water buffalo) the meat of choice as cows are sacred and never eaten.

daal bhaat tarkari with a carrot and daichon salad and a papad

The STAPLE in Nepal, and we mean eaten three times a day staple, is daal bhaat or daal bhaat tarkari (daal bhaat is lentil soup and rice and tarkari is curried vegetables). The daal bhaat (tarkari) is served on a large metal plate with raised edges. There is a large pile of rice on the bottom half of the plate and there are one or more bowls along the top to house the daal, tarkari or anything else that may be served such as hot sauce or achar (pickled vegetables, we think). To eat daal bhaat the local way you pour the soupy daal onto the rice and mix it into balls with your fingers. If you have tarkari add a pinch of the curried vegetables and shovel it into your mouth with your right hand. We were always offered a fork and gladly used it. As they eat with their hand, there is a sink by the dining tables for everyone to wash up before and after their meals (and they need it after, as their hand is covered in sauce and food … no no no, wait, not food, as they lick that all up). Sometimes you get offered a salad, which means carrots and daichon (a white root). A cool thing at local restaurants is that while you’re eating someone goes around offering you second helpings of all the ingredients at no extra cost. A very cheap and tasty way to dine.

You can wash down your daal bhaat with a beer - either local home brew or your store bought beer. The Nepali beers are Everest and Nepali Ice and most popular foreign beers available are Tuborg and San Miguel (both brewed under licence in Nepal). All the beers are only available in a 655 ml bottles J rather than the smaller bottles we‘re used to at home. Here’s a useless piece of information: Everest beer had a special addition bottle out while we were there dedicated to the Sherpa who climbed Everest nine times. He had seven brothers and they have each climbed Everest at least once, or so the label says. Fascinating, we know.

The local home brew is called tongba which is made by pouring boiling water into a metal (or wooden) pot full of fermented millet and is sipped through straw made of same material. This brew tastes like warm watered down saki and it is kind of sour but surprisingly drinkable the more you sip on it J . Speaking of watered down saki, we also sampled the local wine (moonshine) which is made from rice and the locals call it raksi. Raksi is a cloudy drink almost passable for water and tastes between a watered down rakija and saki. Not the greatest but drinkable and does the job J J … our guide got pretty tipsy after a few of them. The raksi is stored in various containers; we had the pleasure of getting served out of a spare gas container as well as a small plastic bucket commonly found in bathrooms around Nepal. *disclaimer, no we do not have a drinking problem*

sukuti on the bottom, wet buff on top and a side of hot chilly sauce

So we spent an evening at a local ‘bar’ J with a local store owner (possibly wino). The bar looked like any other local hole in the wall except that there were lots of people from what we could tell getting shit faced in the back. At one point a man walked in through the front entrance with a tree on his shoulder, we kid you not, and walked to the back with it. When he walked out, he was treeless and much more wasted, yelled something and gave us high fives. At the local ‘bars’ there are no menus and your choices are few but delicious. Alcohol wise you can have beer, local beer or wine or Captain’s Choice Whiskey (the label has an airplane captain on it smiling while holding up a bottle of whiskey). With respect to food there is always vegetable chow mein, wet buff or sukuti. Sukuti is dried meat which can be served on its own or with soya beans, onion, garlic and green chilli. Buff meat is pretty tough to chew, especially when dried (sukuti), so the wet buff dish is pleasant change with its juicy buff meat cooked in a chilli sauce along with tomatoes, onions, chillies and ketchup. Both are delicious but as mentioned the wet buff is a nice break for your teeth.

steaming our momo's

Our guide also took us to a few good places to sample local fare. On our first hike he took us to a place on the mountain side with probably some of the best momo’s we had in Nepal and the best bean salad ever!! Momo’s, which are Tibetan, are dumplings that can be steamed or fried (steamed are way better, hands down) and are usually filled with buff. They seem to have become a favourite snack with traveller‘s - so popular that Coke has ads with momo’s.

One of our staples while in Nepal when we could get our hands on it was Tibetan soup. This simply delicious soup is called thenthuk or thukpa, depending on the type of noodle used (either thin and long or flat and rectangular). All the food is made from scratch when it is ordered, and we mean from scratch … they make the noodles and the momo dough and then prepare, (stuff) and cook. While frequenting the Tibetan restaurants, we also sampled Tibetan bread which, like momo’s, comes either steamed or fried. Again, we are in favour of the steamed variety. Our second staple in Nepal was tea with every meal, which came in pretty handy in the chilly evenings. They had such a large variety of teas including delicious fresh lemon and/or ginger and/or honey tea. We miss both the Tibetan soups and all those wonderful teas so much!!

Overall we would say that Nepali food was good but got boring fairly quickly. On the other hand, we really enjoyed Tibetan food and could eat it again and again.