Kathmandu Food Walk & Newari Cooking Class

Overview

Most visitors to Kathmandu eat in Thamel, which is a shame, because the food there is aimed at people who have just come off a trek and want a pizza. The valley's own cuisine is Newari — older, stranger and considerably better.

This is a walking morning and a cooking afternoon. No restaurant tables until you sit down to eat what you made.

The morning

Ason is the old city's main market, a six-way junction that has been a trading crossroads for several hundred years. It is loudest and best at eight in the morning.

Tastings through the walk: bara, a black-lentil patty fried on a griddle; chatamari, the rice-flour flatbread usually and lazily called Newari pizza; sel roti, a sweet ring of fermented rice batter; juju dhau, buffalo-milk yoghurt set in clay; and whatever the season has put in the market.

Then Indra Chowk, the bead bazaar, and out through the spice lanes.

The afternoon

A family kitchen, a cook who has made this food her whole life, and four dishes: momo — including the folding, which takes longer to learn than anyone expects — chatamari, aloo tama (potato with bamboo shoot and black-eyed beans) and a fresh achar.

Lunch is what you cooked, served alongside a full samay baji platter with each element explained: beaten rice, spiced soybean, buffalo choila, boiled egg, ginger, garlic and dried fish.

Practicalities

Eight hours, mostly on your feet on uneven and often wet ground. Come hungry and do not eat breakfast.

Tell us in advance about dietary restrictions. Vegetarian is trivially easy; vegan needs a day's notice because dairy runs right through this cuisine.

Best season

Year-round. The market runs through the monsoon and the kitchen is indoors. Only Dashain closes it, when the city empties for a fortnight in September or October.