What Is Himalayan Cuisine? Chefs Rethink South Asia’s Mountain Foods | Eater

"A "modernist Himalayan restaurant" in Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, run by Prakriti Lama Patel and her husband Viraf Patel that channels mountain treks and shared meals into reimagined homestyle dishes. After a New Year’s trek to Everest base camp in Solukhumbu, Nepal, Lama Patel recalls, "As we savored a bowl of bean stew around the fire, we realized, no matter who we were or where we came from, we were all equal in the mountains," and she translated that moment into a hummus reinterpretation using white beans from Nepal’s Solu region. Small plates include warm taro leaf confit soaked in ghee with crisp taro chips; potato wedges dusted with citrusy timur pepper; and fry bread (Tibetan flatbread) slathered with hot honey and cheese from Kalimpong, West Bengal. The restaurant also turns social statements into dishes: the corn and nettle soup, which Lama Patel calls a "social statement soup," reframes nettle—"Nettle grows as a weed, and is considered to be poor man’s food in Nepal"—by adding corn grits, crisp smashed corn and wild chives. On technique and presentation she notes, "Our [restaurant] is close to a home experience, and so there are no fluid gels or complex techniques," and explains the ethos: "We are just putting in some extra effort by using the right cuts of meat or better quality cheese so that it becomes easier to accept in a modern setting." - Rituparna Roy