Tibet Nepal House - Pasadena (Old Town)

The first time I tried Tibetan and Nepalese cuisine was in Wisconsin, of all places. Actually, Madison was surprisingly wonderful, filled with more ethnic restaurants than I expected (I tried Afghan cuisine for the first time there too.). I remembered mung bean patties and a huge dosa, but can't remember which was my or my friends' order. The flavors were vaguely Indian, redolent of spices and curry, but different.


Several years later, I met up with a friend of a friend for dinner and he took me to Tibet Nepal House in Pasadena, thinking that it'd be a new cuisine for me. Nope! The conversation was better than expected; the food, however, was decidedly less so. I remembered ordering the sherpa stew, and that the meat was so hard and dry that he wanted to send it back to the kitchen. For someone who picked a cuisine that was a little unusual, even for SoCal standards, he was really quite unadventurous with regards to food in general and we never went out again.

So my first impression of Tibet Nepal House wasn't so stellar. I don't remember what else we ordered that night, but one dry, hard stew shouldn't chase me away from further exploring Tibetan cuisine. So in July 2009, I went with Gourmet Pigs to try out the $8.99 lunch buffet.