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Chomolungma restaurant in Canberra

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Located in a little cobblestone lane in a suburb of Canberra is a Nepalese restaurant.  I wanted to try eating there as I had not eaten Nepalese food before and as it was a friends birthday we decided to celebrate here.

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It’s a quaint little restaurant which is quite nicely decorated inside.  There was only one other couple dining when I arrived and when they left only one other arrived, so a quiet night for a Wednesday at this restaurant.

As their website says…Chomolungma is Tibetan and means ‘The Goddess Mother of Mountains’ and refers to Mount Everest.  When my friend arrived, we ordered some Roti bread [which was pan fried and tossed with ghee] and a main course each.  We decided not to share as my friend wanted to order a meat dish and of course I only eat vegetarian food.

We were given complimentary pappadams before our meal arrived which were great to suppress our hunger as neither of us had time for lunch that day.  Then pretty much straight after that our meals arrived.  I also ordered white rice and a mango pickle dish.

Our waitress told us that Nepalese food is influenced by the Tibetan cuisines from the North and Indian from the south which makes extensive use of spices like cumin, Himalayan pepper, chillies, garlic, coriander and many other spices.  I must say with my meal I didn’t find there were enough spices and my friend said the same about her dish.  My dish was the green beans, potatoes cooked with tomatoes, onion and garlic which was nice but I just thought it needed a bit of spice to liven it up.

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My friend, the birthday girl ordered the beef with vindaloo sauce…

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After our main courses were served, our waitress told us a little bit about the chef who was born in Nepal who when he was growing up had an interest in how his meals were prepared by his mother.  This interest then led the chef to commence work in the hospitality industry in 1996 in Nepal and is now an expert in Nepali cuisine.

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(photo courtesy of http://www.tripadvisor.com.au)

Something interesting I learnt about the restaurant is that if you order the Nepali Thali which is a meat or vegetarian meal made up of a selection of dishes, it comes in a tray with little dishes. Really Thali means a round platter used to serve food and that is exactly how the meal is served. The idea behind a Thali is to offer six different flavours of sweet, salt, bitter, sour, astringent and spicy on one single plate.  The plates looked great.  I wish I had ordered this!!

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(two photos courtesy of http://www.mapsofindia.com)

 Lovely night, probably would return just to try some other dishes, especially the Thali.