Food in Nepal – Day 3, 4 – breakfast, Him Thai Restaurant, Cafereena – a multi cuisine restaurant & Chinatown Restaurant

Day 3 started at 4am with no breakfast. Thankfully I had my stash of pastries bought the night before. 😛
As you may know, the very next morning in Pokhara we went up to Sarangkot for the breathtaking sunrise. Do take a look at the pictures HERE.

Upon our return, we tucked in our breakfast at Hotel Trek-O-Tel (Pokhara) which was extravagant by Nepalese standards. Other than the usual bread, butter, milk and plain fried eggs, there were pork, stewed cucumbers, dhalls, POTATOES, chappati and thick fluffy scrambled eggs with minced vegetables.

Day 3-  Breakfast.

Breads (both white and brown) in Nepal are typically porous but funnily enough, tasty even on its own. The breads are soft but not smooth.  Butters here are rich, creamy and smooth. Very lovely with the breads and homemade jam.

Hotel Trek-O-Tel (Pokhara) has a lovely outdoor dining area.

But I kept to the warmth of the inside.

We checked out of Trek O Hotel and headed to Fewa Lake for our boat ride. (Blog post err..soon.)
Since it was a touristy area, there were some stalls peddling souvenirs as well as food. As I stood waiting for our coach, I was tempted by this “snack”.

We were warned repetitively to not consume anything from roadside stalls but I was feeling bold and decided to go ahead anywas.

Here are the steps of preparation; as numbered.

No one in our media group dared to take a bite when I offered. Ah well, less man more share right? 🙂

Don’t ask me for the name. Most local Nepalese can’t speak English and even our guide wasn’t able to give me a name for it.

I can tell you how it’s made of though. It’s basically a mish-mash of crushed mini puri, chickpeas, potatoes, a dollop of yogurt, some shreded cabbage, cucumber, onions and a squeeze of lime as well as a scoop of chilli sauce prior to serving.

I stared in fascination and trust me, it is as tasty as it looks! :DD
I was really happy I tried this and no, I didn’t have any diarrhea problems. Lucky me 😛

We leaft Pokhara behind and headed back to the city of Kathmandu. It was another 6-7 hours of ass-numbing coach ride. Lunch was at the River Side Spring Resort enroute to Kathmandu.

Day 3: Lunch.

As I have mentioned before, all our meals were either at restaurants or at hotels. This resort is really nice despite being in the middle of the highway joining Kathamandu and other cities.

Our lunch was again buffet-style, with the usual rice, fried NOODLES with vegetables (yes the very same type of noodles), chicken, vegetables (common vegetables here are cabbage, long beans, carrots, cauliflower).
Soup was a starchy base one this time (instead of the clear ones we had so far), with some mushrooms, ham and egg whites. Again it is very closely reminiscent of our Chinese soups.

I tried a Kulfi Cardamom ice cream which is creamy, nutty and spiced at the same time. The texture is rather grainy instead of smooth.

We continued our journey (another 4-5 hours ) to reach Kathmandu. So yes, a lot of time were spent on the road traveling from 1 destination to another. And traveling on these roads are painfully slow as the road conditions can be very poor at certain areas.
Dinner was at Him Thai, which as its name suggest, serves Thai food. While its wonderful that Kathmandu offer a myriad of cuisine, it is a shock to all of us to be having Thai food for dinner.
To make things worst, some of us in the media group are Thais so they were quite disappointed that food was certainly not authentically Thai. Even I could barely swallow the tom yam soup and the bland fried padthai. The skewers and vegetables were alright so that made up for dinner.

Day 3 : Dinner at Him Thai.

The next day was the AirAsia X CSR Launch for the One Child One Laptop Programme (OLPC). You can read about it HERE.

Royal Singi Hotel is apparently one of the best hotel in Kathmandu City. A room here cost approximately USD100 (single bed) non-inclusive of breakfast.

But you would want to eat the breakfast here! The spread was good with a mix of local and western fare.

I couldn’t resist such a beautiful setting. This was exactly where I sat for the 3 days I stayed here.

Day 4: Breakfast.

You can help yourself to coffee or tea but the waiters/waitresses would come to the table to refill for you! Yes, there is table side service.

I had this: Pork sausages, pork bacon, fluffy omelettes… Delicous! It certainly made up for the horrible dinner the night before!

And second helpings… 🙂

Here’s the rest of the spread, which was more of less similar for the next 3 days. I didn’t expect much after the last few hotels. But seeing so many variety of pastries and breads alone for the breads section totally made my day.

FRESH AVOCADOS – this had me baffled. Then there were oats, fresh milk, fresh butter, cereal, yogurt and fresh fruits.

During the CSR event, we got a box of local sweets which was lunch til we got back to town for a real meal. The puff was a bit too heavy on the spice for me and it was spicy hot too.
As usual the journey was slow and long back to the city. But it was all worthwhile seeing how our visit was for a good cause.

Lunch was one of the best meal we had in Nepal!
Lunch Day 4: Cafereena  Multi Cuisine Restaurant, Kathmandu City.

Lunch was really delicious. The variety of spread and the abundance of vegetable dishes was like a reward for our hard work earlier! And our guides had heard our grunts so we finally got to sample the momos (Nepalese steamed dumplings)!

It wasn’t my first time eating it as there are restaurants in KL that sells authentic Nepalese fare but its certainly my first eating it here in Nepal itself.
Tastewise? It didn’t defer much from the ones in KL.

I have gotten a good shot of the rice here. See how firm and fluffy each grain is?

All of the vegetables were simple stir-frys and yes, again they do looks “Chinese” style.

This particular one (most bottom pic of the collage below) was deep fried long beans with garlic. Crispy, fragrant and addictive! 🙂

Eggs with tomatoes – simple but delish! Then there were oyster mushrooms, followed by cucumber and garlic. Actually, most of the dishes were stir-fried with garlic.

We look as if we are having a vegetarian meal don’t we? 🙂

And out of the blue, we have green curry chicken on the table!

And in quick succession, we were served Tom Yum soup, which though wasn’t as authentic but hitting a close 70%.

This restaurant offers almost 20 types of momos – from vegetarian and meat to a combination of both.
All of us loved the food here and it is certainly on my recommended list.

Dinner Day 4: Chinatown Chinese Restaurant and Bar

Food was good but we ate in candle light setting (I kid you not!) so it was way too dark to take any pictures. But the food was typically chinese with rice, chinese stir fry vegetables, chicken with cashew nuts, chilli taufu (mapo style), and hot steaming sze chuan soup. Very good.

This is the restaurant, and the only picture I managed that night.

Next, day 5 and 6 meals!
So what do you think of the meals we had in Nepal so far? :DD

** This is a media trip with the Air Asia team and media from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. We were in Nepal for the Air Asia X CSR launch of the OCPL programme, a community outreach project in partnership with OLE Nepal.

*Group photo credit to Djamilah from Indonesia.

Our 6D5N tour was handled by Incentive Tours & Travels Pvt Ltd who did a fabulous job taking care of us!
For any enquiries about traveling in Nepal, do drop me a comment here! 🙂

More posts on NEPAL:

• Kathmandu, Nepal 2012 – Day 1 in summary – Arrival: Tribhuvan International Airport & the 6 hours journey to Chitwan National Park
• Kathmandu, Nepal 2012 – AirAsia X CSR Launch : Kathmandu, Nepal – One Child One Laptop Programme (OLPC)
  
• Kathmandu, Nepal 2012 – Sarangkot – amazing sunrise & breathtaking Annapurna mountains view!
• Kathmandu, Nepal 2012 : Chitwan National Park – Elephant rides, baby rhinos and more!
• Kathmandu, Nepal 2012 : NEPAL: Art & Culture – Hanuman – dhoka Durbar Square @Kathmandu City
• Kathmandu, Nepal 2012 :Food in Nepal – Potatoes, rice, a lot of vegetables, bananas and surprisingly good pastries
  
• Kathmandu, Nepal 2012 :Food in Nepal – Day 3, 4 – breakfast, Him Thai Restaurant, Cafereena – a multi cuisine restaurant & Chinatown Restaurant
• Kathmandu, Nepal 2012 :Food in Nepal – Day 5 and 6 – Momos, fresh yogurt, thali, bhatura & chola!