Tibet Nepal House

With the sheer number of restaurants I go to every month, sometimes it'll take me awhile to re-visit old favorites, which is why close to 2 years since my last visit, I finally made it back to Tibet Nepal House in Pasadena and I'm glad I did.

Since my last meal there, there's a new owner plus the menu has been re-vamped and I saw some items on the menu I've never seen before, namely Yak dishes. With Yak being a staple meat of the Himalayas, it made sense for it be served at this restaurant, but that wasn't available under the previous owners.

Anyway, with three of us there for dinner, we ordered 7 different dishes. We started our meal with the House Special Sampling Platter Combo which consisted of 4 different appetizers:

Aloo Achaar - Boiled Potatoes garnished with spring onions, cilantro, chili, turmeric and roasted sesame-seed paste served at room temprature

Himalayan Chicken - tender chicken marinated overnight in Himalayan spices

Vegetable Mo-Mo - vegetable dumplings

Cheese Pakora - deep-fried cheese, battered with chickpeas flour and seasoned with spices.

Of the four, I really liked the spicing of the potatoes and marinade flavor of the chicken. Following this appetizer platter were the Yak Mo-Mos, which are basically seasoned ground yak meat stuffed in dumplings. Wow, those yak dumplings were so good. In fact, they were so good that I just ate them plain because I didn't want any sauce to take away from the flavor of the meat as it was. What was nice was that there wasn't any gamey taste at all to the yak, which may be a concern to some.

We also ordered two vegetable dishes, a spinach and an eggplant dish. There was nothing special about either one. Both were solid dishes, although I did think that the eggplant wasn't cooked long enough.

Other savory dishes included the Sherpa Stew and the Laangsha Sekuwa. The Sherpa Stew is simmered chicken with rice, vegetables and Himalayan spices in this wonderful thick and hearty soup. It's an outstanding dish and is one of those kind of stews that would both warm you and sustain you on a cold wintery day or night.

As for the Laangsha Sekuwa, which was a tenderloin beef that was marinated overnight with Himalayan spices, the flavor of the marinade was great, sweet and smoky, but I think the meat could have been more tender. If it was, this dish would have been perfect.

For dessert, we all shared the Mt. Everest in a Blanket which is ice cream rolled in crepes topped with chocolate sauce. Definitely not a traditional Himalayan dessert, but you really can't go wrong with ice cream and chocolate sauce, can you?

Overall, it was great to come back to Tibet Nepal House and I'll definitely not wait 2 years to come back again.

To see pics, go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/la_addict/sets/72157594558914804/

Tibet Nepal House
36 E Holly St
Pasadena, CA 91103
(626) 585-9955
www.tibetnepalhouse.com/