Nepali food culture from the teahouse menu to Newari feast plates, craft beer in Kathmandu and the farms and kitchens behind what's served.
Food & Drink
Dal bhat is described everywhere as Nepal's national meal but most trekkers eat a simplified tourist version. What a proper thali involves, what the refill culture means, and why it is the most calorie-sensible thing to eat on a trek.
Food & Drink
Ask someone what Nepal tastes like and they will probably say momos. Ask again after two weeks in the country and they will say dal bhat. Ask after a month and they will pause, because the honest answer is: it depends entirely on where you were. Nepal's food
Trekking
The teahouse menu looks identical from Lukla to Thorong La. What's behind it - how the food gets there, what the kitchen conditions are, and why dal bhat is the only thing you should order above 3,500 metres.
Food & Drink
In March, the Ilam tea gardens are at first flush. The estate rows sit at 1,600 metres above sea level, the mist comes in from the east, and the picking season has just begun.
Kathmandu
Kathmandu has always had tea houses. What it didn't have until recently was a cafe culture built around craft coffee, working hours, and a generation that has been to Melbourne and brought something back.
Food & Drink
Momo arrived in Kathmandu with Tibetan refugees in the 1950s and never left. It is now the city's defining food, sold on every corner and made differently in every neighbourhood.
Food & Drink
Nepali cooking is not obscure. Most of the staples are lentils, rice, ginger, garlic, and spices you already own. Seven recipes - dal bhat to sel roti - with the context behind what you're making.
Food & Drink
Newari food is not fusion. It is a closed system - feast-bound, fermented, unchanged by five centuries of everything Nepal's valley has absorbed from outside.