TracyFood

Restaurant review (and flashback): Hotel Utse, Kathmandu 13 October 2009 10:33 am

Posted by Tracy in : Kathmandu,nepal,pictures,restaurants,reviews,school,travel,writing , trackback

Hey party people, remember how I was in Nepal two years ago? Yeah, me too. Today I’m rocking a bit of a head cold, so I’m posting another reworking from last year’s food writing class, this piece was written for the travel writing assignment. Professor Sax was particularly entertained by the lede, and I’m still pretty proud of it myself. I’ve updated this version to correct some typos, and incorporate a few of her suggestions, as well as links and pictures.

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If you eat only one meal in Kathmandu, make reservations for dinner at Krishnarpan, the restaurant at Dwarika’s Hotel, rightly recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its celebration of Nepalese art, architecture, and culture, including food. But if you have more opportunities to eat in the capital of Nepal — and I hope you do — try the restaurant at the Hotel Utse, on the outskirts of the Thamel tourist district.

Hustling-bustling Thamel.

Utse is a Tibetan-style guest house, but the hospitality of their menu extends into Chinese, Nepalese and Western specialties, from Continental breakfasts to momos — uniquely Himalayan dumplings, often with curry-spiced fillings. In a city where tourists are advised to boil or otherwise purify drinking water, and avoid uncooked vegetables and fruit, the Utse’s kitchen has a reputation for food safety, which makes it a great venue for exploring local delicacies without fearing for your health. It’s also quite reasonably priced — you can afford several meals there for the price of the aforementioned (still highly recommended, and worth every rupee) dinner at Krishnarpan.

Where Krishnarpan offers a choice between five set menus for dinner only, the Utse restaurant has a huge à la carte menu for every meal of the day, plus snacks. For dinner at Utse, try gacok — a Tibetan hotpot of noodles with fish, chicken, pork, buffalo, egg, tofu, and vegetables, available for 2, 4 or 6 people to share.

Gacok

It comes with sides of shogo (Tibetan-style potatoes) and crunchy momos which have been steamed, then fried.

The perfect drink to accompany this feast is tongba — Tibetan millet beer, served warm like sake, but completely unfiltered. It comes in a huge wooden cup and a straw (for sipping past the fermented whole grains), with a pitcher of boiling water so you can warm everything up to your liking. A fitting non-alcoholic beverage is the famous Tibetan salted butter tea.

But speaking of butter tea — and that side of shogo, for that matter — the Utse’s breakfast offerings are some of my favorites in the world. Their Tibetan special breakfast features shogo, flatbread, and a pot of butter tea (but no one will think any less of you for playing it safe with plain black or spiced Nepali milk tea first thing in the morning).

Hotel Utse’s special Tibetan breakfast.

Utse’s special Nepali breakfast has many names: puri tarkari, alu paratha, potato-vegetable curry and deep-fried flatbreads, all of which translate to “deliciousness with a pot of tea.”

I could eat this all day long.

Utse Restaurant’s dining room wraps around the hotel’s ground floor lobby, from tables at the front overlooking the street, to more private seating in the back. The lobby itself is decorated in the traditional Tibetan style favored in the homes of Nepali Sherpas, with ornately carved wooden furniture and intricately woven carpets and wall hangings in kaleidescopic patterns of color. Hotel guests are also invited to make use of Utse’s beautiful rooftop garden, an oasis of calm that offers stunning views of Kathmandu.

Utse Restaurant and Bar is open from 7 AM until 9 PM, seven days a week. They are located at Jyatha in the Thamel district of Kathmandu, Nepal. Their phone numbers are 977-1-257614 or 977-1-226946; they can also be reached by fax at 977-1-257615 and via email at utse@wlink.com.np.