Durbar Square Dining – Patan

The Durbar Squares of the Kathmandu Valley – Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur – are so captivating one could forgive the tourists for sighing obliviously into the tepid nescafes, burnt fries, and gristly momos that are the staple of many a restaurant favourably positioned to scoop up easy business. They won’t even notice the overpriced fare, spurred into a sense of obligation towards the local economy by the tickets they’ve already bought at the entries to these World Heritage Sites.

For those living in the immediate vicinity of these tourist traps, sustenance is rather more problematic. Actually, most locals will never lose sleep over the issue, sustained as they are by the home cooking of their mothers, wives and sisters. And they can eat and drink on the cheap in any number of hariyo parda establishments. In Patan, the trail from Honacha to Chyasal is littered with a decadence of smaller, dingier bhattis and they all seem to enjoy custom. The kids who frequent the tourist traps do so in much the same spirit as we did Thamel in the 1990s; tourist restaurants have a somewhat glamorous sheen to them that your local Friendship Cafe simply cannot manage.

But are they all tourist traps? Clearly there are many permutations at play here. The expensive, crap restaurant; the expensive, good restaurant; the cheap, crap restaurant; and the cheap, good restaurant are only the most obvious categories. The one thing Durbar Square Diners have in common, from a tourist’s perspective, is their proximity to the Durbar Square. Ideally, you’re looking onto it as you feed yourself.

So if you fancy something a little more upmarket than Honacha, even if it is one of the few cross-class bhattis in the Kathmandu Valley, along with Kirtipur’s superior Newa Lahana…where to go, where not? I’ll begin with a couple here and update this post as often as an empty fridge bumps me out my Mangal Bazaar flat onto the streets below. No one pays me to choke myself with momos and chowmein across town.

Cafe de Patan is on the right, right before you get to Patan Durbar Square on the left. I was once or twice positively impressed by both price and rice (in a manner of speaking, of course: the rice here is more likely to be beaten, though not downcast, ha, ha), the crucial qualifier being that I was yet to discover Honacha. The grub’s fine, but very overpriced.

Further down the road as you pass the square, on the overhanging, first floor of a long building block housing a random assortment of typical Patan businesses, is a busy, cosy establishment the name of which slips my mind (how unprofessional, because amateur, I told you no one pays me for this gig, I’ll go check tomorrow, ok? checked – it’s Layeku Kitchen), but which is unmissable – at first sight you’d take it for part of the square itself, except it is separated from it by tooting motorbikes and the usual accoutrements of third world civilisation. The Nepali set of black lentil soup w/rice, greens, mismas veggies, chicken, tomato chutney and papad was not the most authentic, but it came in nice, weighty brass bowls, came to just Rs 185, and came in very handy considering I was having lunch at 3pm. P(rice)!

To complete the triumvirate south side of Patan Durbar Square we have Tajeju Restaurant & Bar, housed in a skinny, unattractive cement block just as you turn to the right, away from the square, into a busy market street. The chief attractions are the views from the fifth floor and the cheap prices. The food is adventurous (szechuan noodles, for instance) but not particularly evocative of anything.

More to come.

Mismas Moksh

Finally, a bar that lives up to its name. Moksh has always been a notch or two clear of what tired Thamel has to offer, and has long been a favourite of the Patan crowd. Nepalis and expats congregate gregariously on busy Tuesdays and weekends as well as on the quieter, smokier nights, in the garden, the house bar, or the two-part terrace. 

But yesterday’s performance by the collective ‘ The Night’ proved yet again the old dog isn’t handily placed in Pulchowk simply so Patanites can slake their thirst this side of the river. The garden performance, though marred early on by power blips the band blamed charmingly on neglecting to invite one of the musicians onstage, was such a fusion as I have rarely seen in Nepal before: a balance of talent, professionalism and restraint. It was a blessed contrast to the rather aimless jam sessions that tend to transpire of a Kathmandu evening.

The Night’s ‘Tribalism to Technology’ gig started slowly, and stopped a little too often to earn the momentum they strove for, but when they did get going, the going was good. Initially it seemed as though their sound risked being swamped by the broad ensemble of guitars, keyboard, tabla, drums, sarangi, sitar, flute and vocals ranging from Shreeti’s mezzo-soprano to Ranav’s death-baritone. The Night skirted the issue by building on clear melodies derived in part from Nepali folk and interleaved by excursions into darker territory. The whole was anchored by simple, effective, trance-like percussive playing and ambient keyboard.

The conscious absence of virtuoso widdling from any of the instrumentalists left space for Shreeti’s elaborations in and around threads supplied by flute, sitar, guitar and Bibhusan’s mellow vocalisations. Shreeti was at her best playing within the limits of her range, and when she combined with Tashi’s perfectly gauged Manangi chants, Moksh was mesmerised.

The Night: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=850042

follow your nose to…Kirtipur

A lazy Saturday afternoon eased past in Bishalnagar and my hopes of hauling friends laden with wives and chiles upto a bhatti in hilltop Kirtipur in the southwest of the valley began to founder in glass after glass of lager. Chyaang! Chwoela! Chiura! I yelled, to little avail. Naah, mumbled one, look there, it’s pouring in Kirtipur. Whuddyu wanna do there anyways? Have a Beer! Barbecued meat! Bread roll!

I persisted. And the skies parted down Kirtipur way just as a van rolled into the gates, at our service. Hurriedly I gathered the more adventurous amongst us and a quick dash across the city and through the lush expanses of Tribhuvan University brought us out onto a road leading straight towards the ridge-top town of Kirtipur. Not the Kirtipur of my unfounded, obsolete imaginings, but a wall of brick and concrete cubes facing onto all comers.

But this ancient town has retained more than just symbolic continuity with its past. As we swung right up onto the incline leading to Newa Lahana, our destination, older houses were to be seen interleaved amongst the new. We soon came out onto a square, parked, and trundled down through an alley strung across with soft yellow pearls of bulbs and sided with old, well-kept residences on the walls of which could be seen affixed a range of cultural artifacts, much in the manner of (the inside of) an English pub. To be honest, Thambahal reminded me of a medieval European town centre, complete with tourists (us!), albeit a little dustier, rustier and mustier.

This is it! announced our second-timer. We hesitated to climb the wooden stairs leading up to a raised platform next to a big red and black banner reading ‘Newa Lahana’ (in Newari). A few drinkers lounged about on a few pretty cushions and straw sukuls. This is it?

Far from it. In a plain modern building to the left, there were customers and floor space aplenty, and it was buzzing. Nawa Lahana is essentially a rambling, open-air bhatti complete with lovely dusky views of the valley before and behind, but this is not what the youngsters throng this place for. It’s a community-run restaurant, and local women chip in with their specialities – be it tongue or marrow or a drink to singe the tongue and chill the marrow – and they’re special indeed. The baras had a fluffy, bready fullness about them that Honacha can’t match; the sukuti was luscious, almost sweet despite the fire in them; and the marrow is a little more delicate than what I gingerly tried in Lazimpat’s Bhumi Resto-bar. The chyaang, served either in big earthen jars or heavy brass vases, is more than adequate, though as latecomers we had to beg for a fair portion of what was left in the evening crush.

The bill, as always, was ludicrous. Why do I continue to frequent the overpriced, undercooked tourist haunts of the city when I can eat and drink my fill at any one of the exemplars of our proud tradition of bhattis?