Himalayan Nepalese Restaurant & Cafe Victoria Park – Perth

It’s easy to find good food these days, but not so easy to find good food at a wallet friendly price. After weighing up my options for dinner choices in the suburb of Victoria Park in Perth last night I finally decided on a rather out there choice. I hadn’t been recommended this restaurant but the draw card for me was the fact I could try a new cuisine – Nepalese.

The Himalayan Nepalese Restaurant and Café is not a looker from the street, actually I think if I were walking past I wouldn’t even consider eating there. Looks aren’t everything they say and my oh my is that so true in this case! There is indoor and outdoor seating. We opted for outdoor seating as it was rather packed inside the busy restaurant.

The waiter showed us to our table, very plain and simple and our table had 3 chairs, all a different style! It actually reminded me of eating out at the local restaurants in Asia. We were given water and some delicious spiced peanuts to snack on while we mulled over the menu. Another waiter then came out with our chilled sparkling we had bought with us in an ice bucket.

The menu was covered in some sort off traditional looking material and at only 5 pages long I thought decision-making should be easy – again I was proved wrong! The first page was an introduction to the Nepalese cuisine, which I found very interesting having not eaten this type of food before.

Anyway enough blabbing on my part, so what did we eat???

We started with a shitan (entrée), which the restaurant is rather famous for – the Momos. Momos are traditional Nepalese style meat or vegetable dumplings, specially spiced and wrapped in dough with fresh coriander, ginger and garlic, served with home-made sauce. We opted for the lamb Momos and I have to say I think these are some of the best dumplings I have ever eaten in my life, and I have tried quite a lot of dumplings (I don’t know if I should really be admitting to that fact)! Compared to Chinese dumplings these ones actually taste like they have real meat in, the lamb combined with the spices was just exquisite!

The dumplings and the homemade curry type sauce was a match made in heaven for our bottle of Yarra Burn NV Brut Sparkling from the Yarra Valley. The vibrancy and freshness of the wine really complimented the food and the notes of citrus, toast and baked fruit pie really made my taste buds jump for joy.

Next up we had Chara ko Sekuwa, which is tender pieces of chicken thigh marinated in special Nepalese spices with yogurt, cooked in a Tandoori oven. As well as the Himalayan Hot Beef main, which is beef cooked in Nepalese spicy sauce. And on the side we got a garlic naan and a bowl of Jhogi Rice, which is a fried rice with peas, cumin seeds and saffron.

The meats were amazingly tender; the spiced chicken melted in your mouth and was lovely with the minted yogurt. You get 4 pieces of chicken, a nice light meal for those who don’t want a heavy curry. The beef was hot but not too hot, you could still taste the beautiful Nepalese spice flavours coming through and it went well with the saffron rice. The only downer was the naan bread was more like roti in my books, however saying that it still tasted damn good!

We paired our mains with a simple Chilean red from Concha Y Toro, Casillero del Diablo Merlot 2011. It was a soft, plumy Merlot, not complicated at all and complimented both the hot spice and Nepalese spices well.
This feast for 2 people which included $8 corkage for the 2 bottles of wine was a mere $60! The food was just divine, the service was impeccable throughout the whole night and in my books we got a complete bargain. I can only see this place getting busier and busier so I would definitely recommend making a reservation ahead of time!!

If you want to see more drool worthy photos, check out the Travelling Corkscrew’s facebook album: click here!