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Heading to Kathmandu soon and looking for top 3 best eating places? You’re in the right place, but let me start from introducing Nepalese cuisine a bit to you.
Nepalese food is a mixture of Indian and Tibetan cuisine. Hence, many of the culinary highlights of Kathmandu are lentil soup and spicy chicken that comes with gravy, marinated pork cooked with chilies, fried rice dishes and two of the most common drinks: rice-based home brew and lassi. Maybe you’ve heard of lassi before? It’s a local milkshake you have to try!
Moreover, you can find Nepalese and Western-style food anywhere in Kathmandu because a lot of restaurants serve continental breakfasts, pizzas and pasta dishes. Hence, if you don’t like the local cuisine, do not panic, there is always a place where you can dig into burger and fries!
Most of the time, we tried to stick to local dishes in Kathmandu and each day we dined out at different places trying traditional Nepalese meals. We’ve got few favourite places and dishes to recommend. Let’s see our top 3 best Kathmandu eating places you can’t afford to miss!
#1 Delicious Thakali restaurant
Located on the first floor of Pariwar B&B hotel, Delicious Thakali was our favourite breakfast and lunch place because we always got what we wanted to try.
The owner was extremely friendly and made the food according to our preferences (no spicy for me and no onions for Cez) so we really enjoyed it and we tried such dishes as omelettes, chicken in gravy and fried chicken wings with plenty of salad.
Some meals we had inside the restaurant and some were delivered to our hotel room so getting food was very convenient for both of us.
As for prices, each meal was very affordable and costed from 100 to 250 Nepalese Rupee. Therefore, we ate more than we should!
Location: Ganeshman Street, Thamel Centre, South of Kathmandu GH, Thamel, Kathmandu 20062, Nepal
Minus: The place is very dark and miserable inside but that’s quite typical for Nepalese restaurants
Rating: 5/5
#2 Gilingche
We ordered spring rolls, mashed potatoes and fried pieces of chicken – a bit too spicy but we found it very tasty and affordable.
Seems like there is no way this restaurant would survive in Europe!
Location: Thamel | Beside the Kubeyra Mahal Hotel, Kathmandu,Nepal
Minus: We waited for the food quite long + chicken pieces we were served were really tiny (avoid ordering them)
Rating: 3,5/5
#3 Prem Bakery & Coffee Shop
It is a great place to try local milky coffee, tea and dig into some homemade chocolate donuts. Therefore, don’t miss it out. Although it is a very tiny place, it has a great hospitality. Maybe you can find interesting locals to have a chat with while sipping your freshly made coffee and digging into a doughnut?
Location: Thamel
Minus: There is no place to sit
Rating: 4,5/5
Due to the fact we really enjoyed the local food, we consider going back to Nepal in the near future and trying more dishes we didn’t manage to try during our first visit. We know that Nepalese food has so much more to offer and we are curious about local snacks. Although this is not the healthiest cuisine in the world, it is still worth digging into.
We hope you will enjoy the food in Kathmandu and your visit will bring a lot of new ideas you can implement into your cooking once you are back home.
Do you have any other places in Kathmandu with amazing food to recommend?
7 thoughts on “Top 3 Best Kathmandu Eating Places”
looks like you really liked the food there Agness! Great little post, places look awesome
Didn’t you know, Andrew, that I’m a real foodie :)?
Thanks for this post about Kathmandu; it should be wonderful and the dishes look so delicious!
Love
My pleasure, Manu!
You’re making my mouth water! I obviously love Nepali food as I am from there.. I haven’t lived there for five years but I do remember few places in Kathmandu where I loved to eat.. One of those was a Chinese stick food cafe right in Thamel, too bad I don’t remember the name :( they serve spiced, fried sausages, mushrooms,potatoes, chicken etc on stick (with spicy hot sauce, yum!), dumplings (momos) in different varieties and other delicious snacks for reasonable prices. The restaurant inside is quite dark and not the kind of place where you can sit and enjoy, it’s basically just for the food! :) There are such Chinese stick food places everywhere in Kathmandu, some of them are near old Bhatbhateni supermarket too.
When you are in Kathmandu, you should definitely try Newari food. Newars are the natives of Kathmandu and have unique culture and cuisine. One place I went to, (really local as the lady there cooked right in front of us) was called ‘Honacha’ in Patan Durbar Square. You could try ‘bara’ (egg pancake with lentils), ‘chhoela’ (barbecue meat made into spicy salad, usually buffalo meat), ‘sukuti’ (dried buffalo meat mixed with onions and spices) and of course momos.
I also loved going to a chain restaurant called ‘Bajeko Sekuwa’ where they sell excellent goat barbecue meat with many side dishes to go with it. Absolutely delicious but could be a little pricey for backpacker’s budget.
Then there is the general chain restaurant simply called Bakery Cafe where they especially have great momos. Again, it might be a little pricey.
From vegetarian items, there is a place called “TipTop” near Basantapur Durbar Square (the one in Kathmandu) where they sell many savory vegetarian snacks and desserts like samosas and chaats.
I loved eating ‘pani-puri'(fried, crunchy round bread filled with spiced potato filling and spicy-sour water that the whole young population of Nepal is absolutely crazy about) and ‘chatpate'(puffed rice salad, with things such as potatoes, tomatoes, peas, grams, sauce, etc).You can find these vendors literally everywhere in the city. I often went to Baneshwor (where the constituent hall is) where there were many vendors selling these items. Chatpate and panipuri are usually sold in late-afternoons and evenings. I am sure you could also find them right outside monkey temple for example. However, these are not guaranteed to do your stomach good. When I visited last year with my Polish boyfriend and when he tried the street food (not everyday but sometimes), he was just fine :)
Thank you for sharing. Nice to know you are Nepalese and your boyfriend is Polish :)))))
Aaaaah! I wish I were back in the Indian region! I hear that Nepal is much better than India, as far as service with a smile is concerned. Is this true?
Whichever way, will you look at that delcious food!