Eating Tibetan in Boudha: Noodle Soups, Laphing and Butter Tea

The neighbourhood surrounding Boudhanath Stupa has been home to Tibetan families since the 1960s, and their kitchens have shaped how the whole of Kathmandu eats. Step off the stupa plaza into any side lane and you will find small canteens with steamed-up windows, hand-written menus and monks at the next table. Come hungry.

Noodle soups

Thukpa is the general word for noodle soup. A deep bowl arrives with wheat noodles in a clear, savoury broth, topped with vegetables and slices of meat or tofu, and seasoned at the table with chilli paste. It is the default lunch on a cold day.

Thenthuk is the hand-pulled version. The cook stretches a strip of dough and tears it into rough, flat squares directly into the boiling stock. The uneven pieces are soft and chewy, and the soup is heartier than thukpa, with radish, greens and meat.

Gyathuk uses thinner noodles in a style influenced by Chinese cooking.

Laphing

This is Boudha's signature street snack and unlike anything else in Nepal. Laphing is a cold, slippery sheet of jelly made from mung bean or wheat starch. The vendor spreads it out, adds a filling of crisp fried gluten or crushed noodles, spoons on soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and a fierce red chilli oil, rolls it up and slices it into bite-sized rounds. A soupy variety is served in a bowl with the same seasonings.

It is cool, sour, garlicky and extremely hot. Ask for "less spicy" on your first try. Stalls cluster just outside the stupa gates and in the lanes to the north, and are busiest in the afternoon.

Breads and fried things

• Tingmo. A soft, steamed bread twisted into layers, with no filling. It is torn apart and used to mop up stews and spicy dishes.

• Shabhaley. A round or half-moon pastry stuffed with seasoned minced meat and deep-fried or pan-fried until crisp. Vegetable versions exist.

• Tibetan bread. A puffy disc of fried dough, eaten for breakfast with honey, jam or eggs. Trekkers know it well.

• Phing. Glass noodles stir-fried with vegetables, mushrooms and meat.

Meat dishes

• Shapta. Thin slices of meat stir-fried quickly with onion, chilli and ginger. Order it with tingmo.

• Gyuma. Sausage made with meat and blood, sliced and fried.

• Dried meat, tossed with chilli as a snack.

Buffalo is the usual meat. Yak appears occasionally. Vegetarian options are common, since many monks and nuns avoid meat.

Drinks

Butter tea is the classic accompaniment: tea churned with butter and salt, served in a bowl or cup and refilled constantly. Think of it as soup and it makes sense.

Sweet milk tea is the alternative for those who cannot face salt.

Chhyang, a mild, cloudy barley or rice beer, and tongba, hot millet beer drunk through a straw, are served in some of the evening eateries.

Tsampa

The staple food of Tibet is roasted barley flour. It is mixed by hand in a bowl with butter tea to form a dough and eaten in small lumps, or stirred into porridge. A few places in Boudha offer it at breakfast. It is plain, nutty and very filling, and tasting it helps explain how people have lived on the high plateau.

How to choose a place

There are two kinds of eatery here. The rooftop restaurants around the plaza have fine views of the dome and menus covering everything from pizza to momo. The small kitchens in the back lanes have plastic stools, a short list of Tibetan dishes and customers in maroon robes. For food, go to the second kind.

Good signs: a full room at lunchtime, a pot of broth simmering near the door, noodles being pulled to order, and a menu with fewer than twenty items.

A simple tasting route

1. Late morning: butter tea and Tibetan bread at a lane-side café.

2. Lunch: a bowl of thenthuk and a plate of shabhaley to share.

3. Mid-afternoon: laphing from a street stall, eaten standing up.

4. Evening, after walking round the stupa: shapta with tingmo, followed by a pot of tongba if the weather is cold.

Practical notes

Most small kitchens open from mid-morning to early evening and close on certain Tibetan holidays. Prices are low. Carry cash. English is understood well enough for ordering, and pointing at a neighbour's bowl works too.

Tibetan food is plain, warming and built for cold weather. Eaten in Boudha, among the community that brought it across the mountains, it is also a quiet lesson in how a culture carries itself in exile.