Newar food: a guide to the valley's own cuisine

The Newars built the cities of the Kathmandu Valley, and for centuries they were its merchants, farmers, priests and craftspeople. Their language, Nepal Bhasa, their festivals and their kitchens developed apart from the rest of Nepal, inside a fertile valley with rice paddies, buffalo and busy trade routes to Tibet and India.

The result is a cuisine that most visitors never meet, because tourist menus in Thamel lean towards momo, dal bhat and pizza. Newar food is sharper and more varied. It uses beaten rice instead of boiled rice at feasts, buffalo meat in many forms, black soybeans, fermented and pickled vegetables, mustard oil, ginger, garlic and timur, the tingling Himalayan pepper related to Sichuan pepper. Almost every dish has a place in the ritual year: a festival it belongs to, a god it is offered to first, or a stage of life it marks.

If you eat only one thing, make it a samay baji plate. If you eat for a day, follow the plan below.

Samay baji is the Newar ritual plate, offered to deities at festivals and family rituals and then shared among the people present. It is also the best introduction to the cuisine. A typical plate holds a mound of baji, the flattened, dry beaten rice that is the base of every Newar feast; choila, buffalo meat grilled and tossed with chilli, garlic, ginger and mustard oil; black soybeans fried with spices; a boiled or fried egg; slivers of raw ginger and garlic; a potato pickle; and often a bara and a small cup of aila, the Newar rice spirit.

Each part has meaning, and families argue about the correct list. You will find samay baji on the menu of almost every Newar eatery in Kirtipur, Patan and Bhaktapur, served on a leaf plate or a brass tray.

Newar menus can look unfamiliar. These are the dishes we would order for a first-time visitor, roughly from mild to adventurous.

• Bara, also called wo: a thick patty of ground black lentils fried on a flat iron pan, plain or topped with egg or minced meat.
• Chatamari: a thin rice-flour bread cooked on a griddle and topped with egg, minced meat or vegetables, often called Newar pizza.
• Choila: buffalo meat, grilled or roasted, then mixed with mustard oil, chilli, garlic and ginger; haku choila is the darker version grilled over a straw fire.
• Aloo tama: a sour soup of potato and fermented bamboo shoot, eaten across the valley.
• Kwati: a soup of nine kinds of sprouted beans, eaten on the full moon of Janai Purnima in August.
• Yomari: a steamed rice-flour dumpling shaped like a fig, filled with chaku (molasses) and sesame, or with khuwa, made for Yomari Punhi in December.
• Kachila: finely minced raw buffalo meat marinated with spices and mustard oil, a centrepiece of feasts.
• Sapu mhicha and swanpuka: buffalo leaf tripe stuffed with bone marrow, and lungs filled with a spiced batter, both fried. For the adventurous.
• Takha: buffalo meat set in its own jelly, a winter dish.
• Juju dhau: thick, sweet buffalo-milk curd set in clay bowls, the pride of Bhaktapur. The name means king of curds.
• Aila and thwon: aila is a clear distilled spirit made from rice or millet; thwon is a milky, mildly alcoholic rice beer.

Many Newar dishes appear on the table because of the date. Festivals follow the lunar calendar and move each year by a few weeks, so check current status before you travel.

If you want to taste the range in a single day, this is the route we give friends visiting from abroad. It needs a car or taxi for the hops and a good appetite.

• Breakfast in Kathmandu's old town: hot bara from a griddle near Asan, with sweet milk tea.
• Mid-morning in Patan: chatamari with egg in a small eatery near Durbar Square, then a walk through the metalworkers' lanes to make room.
• Lunch in Kirtipur: a full samay baji plate on a terrace looking back over the valley, with a small cup of aila if you like.
• Afternoon in Bhaktapur: a clay bowl of juju dhau on the steps of Nyatapola, and a look at the potters' square.
• Evening: a long Newar or Nepali set dinner in a restored house, or a home meal arranged by your guide, where you will meet kachila, aloo tama and pickles you have not seen yet.

Kirtipur, on its ridge south-west of Kathmandu, has a cluster of Newar restaurants near the old town where families come on Saturdays for samay baji with a view. In Patan, small eateries in the lanes around Durbar Square serve bara, chatamari and choila; Honacha, just off the square, has been feeding locals for generations from a dark, low room. Bhaktapur is the place for juju dhau, sold by the bowl around Taumadhi and Dattatreya squares, and for small kitchens serving wo and samay baji to people who live there.

In Kathmandu itself, look in the old town between Asan, Indra Chowk and Kathmandu Durbar Square, where tiny shops fry bara at breakfast. Several heritage hotels and restaurants in restored houses serve long Newar or Nepali set dinners for visitors, a good choice for a first night. For the full experience, the best meal is in a home, which a local guide can arrange.

At a traditional Newar feast, called bhwe, guests sit in rows on mats on the floor, and men of the host family serve course after course on to leaf plates. The order of seating follows age and status, and the eldest are served first. Eat with your right hand. Accept a little of everything, as refusing outright can seem rude; it is fine to leave food on the plate.

Nepalis observe jutho, the idea that anything touched by your mouth or saliva becomes impure. Do not offer food from your plate, do not drink from a shared bottle by touching it to your lips, and do not put a used spoon back into a serving dish. When aila is poured from a height into your cup, you may touch it to your lips and set it down. Wash your hands before and after the meal, and wait for the host to begin.

Newar food is meat-heavy at feasts, but much of it is vegetarian: bara, plain chatamari, aloo tama, kwati, yomari, pickles and juju dhau. Ask for vegetable choila made with mushrooms or soybeans, which many restaurants now serve. Vegans should know that ghee and curd appear often.

For a sensitive stomach, choose food cooked hot in front of you, skip raw kachila and salads, and drink bottled or filtered water. Go slowly with aila, and with juju dhau on your first day. Most Newar eateries we use are where our guides' own families eat.