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EATING AND
DRINKING |
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Nepal - specifically Kathmandu - is renowned as the budget eating
capital of Asia. Sadly, its reputation is based not on Nepali but pseudo-Western
food: pizza, chips (fries), "sizzling" steaks and apple pie are the
staples of tourist restaurants. Outside the popular areas, travellers'
chief complaint is the blandness of the diet.
Yet Nepal lies at the intersection of two great culinary traditions,
Indian and Chinese, and if you know what to look for you'll find good,
native renditions of everything from tandoori to stir-fried dishes. The
simple cooking of the hills - Nepal's heartland - is essentially a
regional variation of north Indian, comprising rice, lentils, curried
vegetables and meats, and chutneys. In the Kathmandu Valley, the
indigenous Newars have their own unique cuisine of spicy meat and
vegetable dishes. In the Tarai, roti (bread) and the vast range of
Indian curries, snacks and sweets comes into play, while in the
mountains the diet is essentially Tibetan, consisting of soups, pastas,
potatoes and breads.
Where to eat
Enterprising budget tourist restaurants in Kathmandu and Pokhara show an
uncanny knack for sensing exactly what travellers want and simulating it
with the most basic ingredients. Some specialize in Italian, German,
Chinese, Tibetan, Indian, Mexican, Thai, Korean or even Japanese food,
but the majority attempt to do a little of everything. Display cases
full of extravagant cakes and pies are a standard come-on. There's no
denying that the food is tasty - especially after a trek - but the scene
has grown progressively more gross and surreal over the years, and quite
a few travellers end up getting sick from the food in such places. And
while they won't necessarily admit it, virtually all tourist restaurants
rely heavily on monosodium glutamate as a flavour enhancer, which tends
to make all tourist food taste the same, and of course can cause
allergic reactions (if MSG gives you trouble, try asking for food
without "tasting powder").
Tourist restaurants are notoriously hard to recommend, as chefs are
forever jumping ship and taking their menus with them. And don't assume
that a crowded place must have good food: tourists tend to judge
restaurants by their ambience, and in any case the more diners there
are, the slower the service will be. (That said, a popular restaurant's
high turnover should ensure fresher ingredients.)
Local Nepali diners ( bhojanalaya) are traditionally humble affairs,
offering a limited choice of dishes (or no choice at all). Menus don't
exist, but the food will normally be on display or cooking in full view,
so all you have to do is point. Utensils should be available on request,
but if not, try doing as Nepalis do and eat with your hand - the right
one only. In towns and cities, eateries tend to be dark, almost
conspiratorial places, unmarked and hidden behind curtains. On the
highways they're bustlingly public and spill outdoors in an effort to
win business. Tarai cities always have a fancy (by Nepali standards)
restaurant or two, patronized by businessmen and Indian tourists, and
lots of dhaba (the Indian equivalent of bhojanalaya). Confusingly,
restaurants are also often called "hotels".
It might take some time before you start appreciating the fine
differences between bhojanalaya and other traditional establishments.
Teahouses ( chiya pasal) really only sell tea and basic snacks, while
the simple taverns ( bhatti) of the Kathmandu Valley and the western
hills put the emphasis on alcoholic drinks, but also serve basic Nepali
meals. Trailside, both chiya pasal and bhatti are typically modest
operations run out of family kitchens. Sweet shops ( mithai pasal),
found in bigger towns and identified by their shiny display cases, are
intended to fill the gap between the traditional midmorning and early
evening meals; besides sweets and tea, they also do savoury South Indian
and Nepali snacks.
Street vendors sell fruit, nuts, roasted corn, fried bread and various
fried specialities. When you're travelling, as often as not the food
will come to you - at every bus stop, vendors will clamber aboard or
hawk their wares through the window.
Vegetarians will feel at home in Nepal, since meat is considered a
luxury. Imaginative preparations are rare, though: rice, lentils,
vegetable curry and noodles are the standard offerings everywhere. As a
rule, vegetarian dishes get more interesting and varied the closer you
get to India, with some orthodox Hindu restaurants in border towns
billing themselves as vegetarian-only. Tourist menus invariably include
meatless items, which are often excellent.
Nepalis generally start the day with nothing more than a cup of tea, eat
a full meal around mid-morning, then carry on until the second big meal
of the day at dinnertime. The Western concept of breakfast doesn't tie
in very well. Again, tourist restaurants have this covered - many do
excellent set breakfast deals, with eggs, porridge, muesli and the like
- but out in the sticks you'll have to adjust your eating schedule, or
make do with a greasy omelette or packet noodles
Nepali food
Daal bhaat tarkaari (lentil soup, white rice and curried vegetables)
isn't just the most popular meal in Nepal - for many Nepalis it's the
only meal they ever eat, twice a day, every day of their lives. Indeed,
in much of hill Nepal, bhaat is a synonym for food. The daal bhaat
served in restaurants ranges from pretty good to derisory - it's a meal
that's really meant to be eaten at home - so if you spend much time
trekking or travelling off the beaten track you'll probably quickly tire
of it. That said, a good achhaar (chutney) - made with tomato, radish or
whatever's in season - can liven up a daal bhaat tremendously. The food
will be served on a gleaming steel platter divided into compartments;
one price covers unlimited refills, except in a few establishments that
adhere to the "plate system". Add the daal and other condiments to the
rice in the main compartment, a little at a time, knead the resulting
mixture into mouth-sized balls with the right hand, then push it off the
fingers into your mouth with the thumb.
You'll usually be able to supplement a plate of daal bhaat with small
side dishes of maasu (meat) - chicken, goat or (in riverside bazaars)
fish - marinated in yoghurt and spices and fried in oil or ghiu (clarified
butter). In Indian-influenced Tarai towns you can often get taareko daal,
fried with ghiu and spices to produce a tastier variation, and roti
instead of rice. Sokuti (dried, spiced meat fried in oil) is popular in
eastern hill areas. Soups ( surwa) are sometimes available: tama surwa,
made with bamboo shoots, and gundruk, a sour/tangy concoction of
fermented vegetables, are favourites. You could make a meal out of rice
and sekuwa (kebabs of spicy marinated meat chunks) or taareko maachhaa (fried
fish), both common in the Tarai. If you're invited into a peasant home
in the hills you might be served dhedo (a dough made from water mixed
with toasted corn, millet or wheat flour) instead of rice.
Nepali desserts include khir (rice pudding), sikarni (thick, whipped
yoghurt with cinnamon, raisins and nuts) and versions of Indian sweets.
Other traditional Nepali dishes are more localized, or reserved for
special occasions, but well worth the effort of tracking them down.
Newari food
Like many aspects of Newari culture, Newari food is all too often
regarded as exotic but too weird for outsiders. It is indeed like no
other cuisine on earth: complex, subtle, delicious and devilishly hard
to make (most dishes require absolutely fresh ingredients and/or very
long preparation times).
Most Newari specialities are quite spicy, and based around four
mainstays: buffalo, rice, pulses and vegetables (especially radish). The
Newars use every part of the buffalo: momocha (meat-filled steamed
dumplings), choyila (buff cubes fried with spices and greens), palula (spicy
buff with ginger sauce) and kachila (a paté of minced raw buff, mixed
with ginger and mustard oil) are some of the more accessible dishes;
others are made from tongue, stomach, lung, blood, bone marrow and so on.
Rice, besides being boiled, is also made into chiura (beaten rice, a
common dry substitute for cooked rice) and chataamari (a sort of pancake
made with rice flour). Pulses and beans play a role in several other
preparations, notably woh (fried lentil-flour patties, also known as
baara in Nepali), kwati (a soup made with several varieties of sprouted
beans), musya palu (a dry mix of roasted soya beans and ginger) and
bhuti (boiled soya beans with spices and herbs). Various vegetable
mixtures are available seasonally, including pancha kol (a curry made
with five vegetables) and alu achhaar (boiled potato in a spicy sauce).
Radish turns up in myriad forms of achhaar. Order two or three of these
dishes per person, together with bhaat or chiura, and share them around.
A glossary of food terms
To begin, select a topic in the navigation bar to the left
Indian food
A full description of Indian dishes isn't possible here. The ones you're
most likely to encounter in Nepal are from northern India , such as
Mughlai curries (thick and mildly spiced, often topped with boiled egg)
and tandoori meats (baked in a clay oven, called a tandoor, with special
spices). Roti (bread) is the accompaniment to north Indian cuisine:
chapati (round, flat pieces of unleavened bread) are always available in
Indian restaurants, naan (bigger, chewier versions of the same), paratha
(fried bread) and puri (puffy fried chapatis) usually so. In the Tarai
the best bets are masaala (meaning spicy, although it isn't really)
curries, and you generally can't go wrong with kofta , spiced vegetable
dumplings in curry.
In Kathmandu you'll also run across South Indian canteens, which serve a
completely different and predominantly vegetarian cuisine. The staple
dish here is the dosa , a rice-flour pancake rolled around curried
potatoes and vegetables, served with sambar (a savoury tamarind sauce)
and coconut chutney. You can also get idli (mashed rice, usually
accompanied with sambar), dahi vada (lentil-flour dumplings in curd) and
various vegetable curries.
And as for the incredible array of Indian sweets , well, that could fill
a book in itself. A selection: laddu, yellow-and-orange speckled
semolina balls; jelebi, deep-fried pretzels of battered treacle; barphi,
fudgy diamonds made from reduced milk, often decorated with edible
silver leaf; koloni, a softer version of the same; kudpak, a thick
molasses pudding; lal mohan, brown spongy balls in sweet syrup; and ras
malai, curd cheese blobs in sweet spiced cream. Really good sweets are
found only in the bigger towns.
Tibetan food
Strictly speaking, "Tibetan" refers to nationals of Tibet, but the
people of the Nepal Himalaya, collectively known as Bhotiyas, together
with the people of several other highland ethnic groups, all eat what
could be called Tibetan food .
Momo , arguably the most famous and popular of Tibetan dishes, are
available throughout hill Nepal. Distant cousins to ravioli, the half-moon-shaped
pasta shells are filled with meat, vegetables and ginger, steamed, and
served with hot tomato achhaar and a bowl of broth. Fried momo are
called kothe. Put the same stuffing ingredients inside a flour pastry
shell and fry it and you get shyaphagle, a sort of Tibetan meat pie.
Tibetan cuisine is also justly celebrated for its excellent hearty soups,
usually called thukpa or thenthuk , consisting of noodles or homemade
pasta strips, meat and vegetables in broth.
For a special blow-out, try gyakok , a huge meal for two that includes
chicken, pork, prawns, fish, tofu, eggs and vegetables, and which gets
its name from the brass container it's served in; gyakok is only found
in tourist restaurants and has to be ordered several hours ahead. In
trekking lodges you'll encounter frisbee-shaped items called Tibetan
bread , which, though unappealing on their own, are made more
interesting by the addition of honey or peanut butter.
The average Bhotiya peasant seldom eats any of the above: the most
common standbys in the high country are potatoes , boiled or made into
pancakes ( riki kur), and tsampa - toasted barley flour, mixed with milk
or tea to make a sort of paste, or eaten plain.
Road food and snacks
There's certainly no need to go hungry when you're travelling - fast
food and snacks are available at every stop. Since these dishes are
prepared ahead of time, what you see is what you get. Common sit-down
fare includes pakauda , fried, bready nuggets of battered vegetables,
served with hot sauce, and tarkaari ra roti , vegetable (usually bean)
curry served with puris. Another refreshing possibility is dahi chiura ,
a mixture of yoghurt and beaten rice that isn't so different from the "muesli
curd" served in tourist restaurants. If you're in more of a hurry, you
can grab a handful of samosa , fried pyramids of pastry filled with
curried vegetables, or carry away papar ( pappadums - crispy fried discs
made from chickpea flour), baara (fried lentil patties), chap (potato
and garlic, battered and fried), chana (curried chickpeas), taareko phul
(boiled egg, battered and fried) or other titbits on a leaf plate.
If nothing else, there will always be packet noodles (usually referred
to by brand name: Rara, Maggi, Waiwai, Yum Yum, etc), which can either
be boiled as a soup or stir-fried as chow mein . Roadside vendors peddle
chat (a mixture of peas or soya beans, radish, chilli, salt and lemon,
all whisked together and served in a paper cone or on a leaf), roasted
peanuts, coconut slivers, corn on the cob, sel roti (doughnuts) and lots
more.
Fruit
Which fruits are available depends on the season, but there's usually a
good choice. Lovely mandarin oranges , which ripen throughout the late
autumn and winter, grow from the Tarai up to around 1200m and are
actually sweetest near the upper end of their range. Winter also brings
papaya in the Tarai and lower hills, apples , grown in higher valleys
but widely sold lower down, and sugar cane , a low-elevation crop that
requires strong jaw muscles to appreciate. Mangoes from the Tarai start
ripening in May and are available throughout most of the summer, as are
litchis , watermelons and guavas . Bananas are harvested year-round at
the lower elevations and range in size from little stubbies to jumbo
plantains.
Provisions
Imported chocolates are sold in tourist areas, and waxy Indian
substitutes can be found in most towns. Biscuits and cheap boiled sweets
are sold at roadside stalls everywhere. Kwality ice cream , available
throughout the Kathmandu Valley and Pokhara, is safe. Cheese , produced
from cow, buffalo and occasionally yak milk, comes in several styles and
is sold in tourist areas and "factories" along trekking routes. (In the
hills you might also come across churpi, a native version of cheese made
from dried buttermilk or yoghurt - it's inedibly hard, and is normally
softened by being added to soup.)
Drinks
Water ( paani) is automatically served with food in Nepali restaurants -
sometimes it's been boiled, but verification is difficult, so it's best
to pass unless you really know what you're doing. Various brands of
bottled water are widely available, although bottlers aren't very
strictly regulated, and some tests have found unhealthy levels of germs
in supposedly sterilized water. Check that the seal is intact, as
refilling of bottles is not uncommon. Furthermore, the plastic bottles
that water comes in are not recyclable in Nepal. You'd do well to
minimize your reliance on bottled water by treating tap water with
iodine drops (sold in tourist stores).
Inexpensive soft drinks are safe and sold in "cold stores" just about
everywhere, but prices rise steadily as you move into roadless areas;
Coke, 7-Up and most other international brands are available. Fresh
lemon soda, made with soda water and a shot of lemon (or lime) juice,
makes a good alternative if you want to cut out sugar.
Tea ( chiya), something of a national beverage in Nepal, is
traditionally brewed by boiling tea dust with equal parts milk ( dudh)
and water, along with heaps of sugar ( chini) and a bit of ginger,
cardamom or cinnamon. In tourist restaurants you'll be offered the
choice of "black" or "milk" tea, both usually brewed from a bag - you
have to specify "Nepali" or " masaala " tea if you want it made the
traditional way. (You can also ask for lemon tea - "hot lemon".)
Tibetans and Bhotiyas take their tea with salt and yak butter, which is
definitely an acquired taste.
Locally produced coffee is increasingly available in Nepal, and the
beans aren't bad. Most restaurants make it with instant, though, and
very milky, almost like a latte. Indian-made espresso machines are
getting to be in vogue, but they're usually only used to boil the milk.
Roadside stalls and tourist restaurants serve freshly squeezed fruit
juices , according to the season, but the practice of adding water and
sugar is widespread even among reputable restaurants - if the water
comes from the tap, as is usually the case with roadside vendors, your
chances of catching something are high. Tinned juice and fruit drinks in
cartons are sold in many shops. A lassi , a blend of yoghurt, water or
ice (beware), sugar and fruit (or salt), always goes down nicely, and
helps take the heat out of a curry.
Tobacco and paan
Nepalis love their cigarettes ( churot). Even if you don't smoke,
consider carrying a pack - cigarettes are much appreciated as tips.
Factories in Janakpur and Birganj manufacture dozens of cheap brands,
most of them from a mixture of Nepali and Indian tobacco. The most
popular domestic filter cigarettes are Surya, Shikhar, Yak and Khukuri,
although these are starting to give way to imported brands like Marlboro.
Cheap non-filters such as Bijuli and Deurali are still big with porters.
Cheapest of all are bidi , rolled single leaves of the poorest tobacco,
tied together in bundles of twenty (ask for ek muthaa). After the
evening meal, old men may be seen smoking tobacco in a hookah (hubble-bubble),
or occasionally passing around a chilam (clay pipe).
Many Nepali men make quite a production of preparing tobacco snuff (
surti), slapping and rubbing it in the palm of the hand and mixing it
with lime before placing a pinch behind the lower lip. Surti comes in
little foil packets hung outside kiraana pasal, village stalls that sell
cigarettes, matches, biscuits and the like.
At least as popular, particularly near India, is paan , the digestive
and mild stimulant that Westerners often wrongly call "betel". Paan
sellers sit like priests in their little booths, and ordering paan is a
hallowed ritual. The paan wallah starts with a betel leaf, upon which he
spreads four basic ingredients: katha (a paste that produces paan 's
characteristic red colour), supaari (chopped or shredded areca nut),
mitha masaala (a mixture of sweet spices) and chuna (slaked white lime,
to leach the other ingredients). After that, the possibilities are
endless, although in general most paan will be either of the jharda (tobacco)
or mitha (sweet) variety. For those who haven't got time for the whole
performance, paan wallahs also sell foil packets of paan parag, a
simple, ready-made mix.
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