Kathmandu Newa Chh'en

http://www.kathmandunc.com/

L and I didn’t even know that this restaurant existed, until we were invited to a dinner with his uni mates on the weekend. There were about 15 of us that attended, so we were booked into a small function room inside the restaurant. It was a bit of fun as we were sitting on the floor with low tables and we had to remove our shoes before entering the room. (Unfortunately, it didn’t do much for my terrible lower back as the evening went on).

Kathmandu Newa Chh’en serves up Nepalese and Himalayan food, something which we’ve never experienced before. 

We all ordered the very reasonably priced banquet for $25. There is also a vegetarian banquet available if anyone prefers. The banquet consisted of entrees, various main dishes of chicken, fish, vegetarian, goat and beef, and finishes up with Chea, which is Nepalese spiced sweet tea.

Our entrees started with Tibetan bread (sort of a pizza base with tomato chutney and cheese) and garlic bread. Both were pretty nice, most of us preferred the Tibetan bread.

Tibetan Bread

We were then served meat spring rolls with sweet chilli sauce, samosas and Momos which were steamed dumplings filled with meat and served with a tomato and sesame seed sauce. The momos were interesting and definitely the best entree, although the spring rolls were a close second – plump with spiced mince. 

I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to get a photo of all of our mains. We basically asked to just be served a variety of the meals across the menu rather than picking and choosing which ones we wanted, placing our trust in the waiter. 

The mains were all delicious in their own way, however some were somewhat unexciting. I think this had more to do with the fact that they were all mild and were lacking the chilli flavour that they should have had. (We ordered mild food so that everyone at the table could sample all of the food). 

The Sherpa chicken was one of the more delicious choices, being chicken cooked in a creamy sauce with coriander and lime leaf. 

There were three vegetarian mains, I only got to sample one of them which was the Tomato paneer, paneer (cheese) cooked with capsicum, peas, and herbs in a tomato and yoghurt gravy, delicious!

The beef dish going around the table was Goru ko masu, a traditional Nepalese dish of slow cooked beef with cinnamon, cumin, coriander and cardamom. I could appreciate the sweet spices in the sauce of this dish however the disappointment was the beef. It was dry and kind of chewy.

The highlight for me was the lamb dish Chau kashi. This was lamb cooked with mushrooms in a tomato and cream gravy. It was really delicious and the lamb was tender and fell apart, a stark contrast to the beef dish. 

Ls favourite meal was the Pharsi masu, diced goat cooked with pumpkin, garlic, coriander, cumin and fenugreek. The goat meat was extremely tender, again a contrast to the beef dish.

After the meal we were served Chea, a sweet spiced tea based on milk... basically a chai. It was sweet and so delicious, I wanted to drink 3 of them but didn’t have the room in my stomach to fit it in!

Our thoughts overall were that Kathmandu New Chh’en is a fantastic place for a large group booking, and the banquet is excellent value for money. It was great to be able to sample a wide range of dishes that we wouldn’t have been able to have if it was just the two of us dining. 

Love,

C