Water, Elevators, Opening Night, & Finally Some Photos

So we're kind of up and running! We don't have a full menu yet, but after a very long week of really pushing to get things operational we are mostly there. Our biggest stumbling blocks had been the lack of water and no working elevator (a problem when you are on the 9th floor and the lower floors are still under construction). We were promised both by Tuesday ( we were also promised both by January...so I wasn't holding my breath), but Tuesday came and went with no water or working elevator. On Wednesday we were assured that things would work on Thursday, and despite our skepticism we were told not t worry it was a sure thing. Then there was a problem with the pump, and no water was had on Thursday, but we were told that when the power came on at midnight (load shedding still affects our work greatly) they would be able to pump water. 

Standing by reception looking toward the kitchen

Mr Smith in Kathmandu Two Years On

Sunday marks the two year anniversary of my arrival in Nepal, and what a two years it has been! If you had told me then that in two years I would be opening a restaurant, selling salsa at farmer's markets, had written a book and forging ahead with some other plans I would most likely have thought you crazy. But even stranger really has been getting to know Kathmandu, and to a lesser extent Nepal as a whole. It's one thing to visit another place, but it is another thing entirely to live in another society so different from where you come. On one level your initial reaction to the more outward differences, such as what seem like crazy driving habits, a very alien religious systems and styles of dress that are very different from where you come from are all overcome by the similarities of a common humanity. This is the "no matter where you go, people are people". But this isn't the whole story. Because although this is definitely true, there is a second level you begin to see the longer you stay somewhere, and that is that, it may be the same but cultural differences and the weight of historical outlooks forge differences in people that are much more subtle than the outward appearances but differentiate us much more.

One of these things that I never really appreciated before is that Nepal is, for the most part, a much more socially tiered society than the casual observer from the west first understands. I mean people in the west hear about the caste system, and we in a vague way understand that it's a hierarchical system, but we don't usually understand the real nature of it. For us I think we instinctively relate it to our most common understandings of hierarchy, so we relate to it in an abstract way with the most common form of hierarchical system that we are familiar with, something like a work setting, where high caste people must be born into something like the bosses position, and low caste folks fill the roles of low end workers. This though is not really the case, and the ways it affects the social currents and the ways that people interact with each other is very complex and although it is a somewhat fading system, it has left a very big impression on the mindset of how people relate to each other. This isn't a judgement statement about this being a good or bad thing, but more just an observation that it is very much something that differentiates the psychologies of natives and foreigners. There are many of these subtle differences that you begin to pick up on over time, and it is increasingly clear that there are some subtle differences that add up to some very different outlooks on living.

Another thing I've noticed is just how small the world seems to have gotten, mostly due to the internet. While you never really forget that you're in Nepal, there are times when I've been in my apartment, and maybe I spent Tuesday morning watching a Monday Night Football game (Monday morning I'll be watching the Pats take on the Ravens) and maybe I'm talking to friends or relatives back home over Skype and then I'll go eat breakfast with cranberry pancakes and maple syrup...and finally I step outside and see woman dressed in saris, and taxis honking as they turn the bend and remember "oh yeah...I'm in Nepal". With information technology what it is and global shipping infrastructure allowing almost anything from back home to be available, back home never really feels all that far away to me, despite literally being on the other side of the planet. 

My two years here have been two very different entities. Both years are marred by months of chasing expensive paperwork, lawyers and bureaucrats for the ever elusive visas, but year one saw mostly a lot of getting to know Nepal and Kathmandu, and  plenty of exploring the different trekking circuits up in Annapurna, Langtang, and the Everest region interrupted now and again by a good amount of writing and trying to find my place here. Year two on the other hand has been almost entirely committed to forging that place, bringing the restaurant from a crazy loosely formed concept to the near reality that it is today. In fact it will be almost exactly a year after Donnie and I first started dreaming this thing up while craving burgers, chicken parm sandwiches, and buffalo wings on a trip up to Everest base camp that this place will open up to the public. In between has been many twists and turns that have kept life interesting, and although this all seems to be taking forever to get put together,when I sit and think how much we've done to go from a vague concept to actual reality that far and away surpasses any initial expectations, I can't help but be impressed, and think that possibly my expectations of things happening even faster were perhaps quite ambitious, even if this wasn't Nepal and things went as slow as they do.

Lastly, some thoughts on this blog, which I have maintained since even before I left to come here. Obviously my number of posts have dropped off significantly since i began committing myself full time to opening the restaurant. I don't see this changing in the near future. When we initially open I can't wait to post pictures of the space (Interiors are going in this week!) and I'm, sure some posts on the menu and such will get posted as well, slightly bumping my post count in Feb and March. But my most popular threads here are mostly about trekking, and I don't see myself getting back in the mountains any time before next Dashain at the earliest due to my obligation to get this thing off the ground and fully functional. I will maintain this blog, and hopefully sometime after the initial crazyness of running this restaurant has passed I'll get to some things that are of maybe greater general interest to readers. Until then, meandering posts of random thoughts such as this one will most likely be the norm. But such is life in Nepal.

Making a Menu in Nepal

Doing business here can be challenging and so can cooking. If you combine them together you can get one really good sized headache, but as they say the harder the challenge the greater the reward. Putting a menu together here has lots of challenges ranging from seasonal or unreliable availability of many ingredients to strange pricing structures that make it hard to cost things effectively or even accurately due to variation. Despite this we set out to create a high end pub style set of food that we believe we can reliably make at a cost that people will find acceptable. Exciting for me as well is the fact that we were able to put together a full western style menu complete with graphics and proper descriptions, I think a first in Nepal. It's still not done, and I have no prices actually listed, just place holders but in this post I thought I'd talk about the menu's development to this point. For those that are curious I did the design work in a combination of MS Expression Design and Publisher.

Menu Cover 

The only thing to say about the cover is the logo. We've gone through roughly a dozen logo incarnations, and have almost settled on this one, any further changes should be rather minor. One of the challenges we faced in logo design is that the brand will not be just the restaurant, but a variety of packaged goods as well that we already will be selling at the farmer's market here and hopefully at some of the grocery outlets in the not too distant future after launch. Thus we needed a logo that could transform to fit other foods, but still be the same base logo. Other logos had fonts and flames that couldn't be transformed without removing all resemblance to the original and thus any connection to the brand. This logo on the other hand can keep the same geometry, the same font for "Brian's" and just change the colors, remove the flame and change the font in the center and have individual product packaging that resembles the original closely that people realize it's all related.

Menus in Nepal

Posts are indeed sparse as I work toward getting the restaurant on its feet. While registration and paperwork continue in the background I've spent the last several days working on the menu. The text of the menu took quite some time and is essentially done, pending final decisions on which items we are going to run. Something I've wanted to do is put a menu together that is very reminiscent of the pub style menu's that you get in the US, one that integrates graphic elements, good descriptions and maybe a little wit into a menu that is more interactive than the typical menu that you find here- which tends to be rather boring and often depicting pictures of food that the place couldn't produce in a million years.

  Buffalo Wings!

One of the things I'm most excited about seems simple enough, but nobody does them here and that is Buffalo wings. Now outside the US people have no clue what you're talking about apparently as many other expats from Britain and other places have looked at me like I had three heads when I brought up the term. They cause a bit more confusion here when you consider that Buffalo (or buff) is a normal staple on menu's and thus the term Buffalo Sauce can cause confusion. Due to this, and other cultural variances in food lingo, I've added various text boxes that explain what stuff is. In this case it's a place, Buffalo New York and not the animal. Other cases are things like chili being what Americans think of it as, and not the the little peppers or the sauce that you get here when you order "chicken or chips chili" which is entirely different. 

New Hampshire wins best licence plate hands down.

On the menu and eventually in the restaurant we're hoping to create a fun environment by adding things like US licence plates, odd street signs...although how you top some of the stuff you around here I don't really know. That said it'll be some small pieces of home that will be something new for people here and something familiar to those who come from the west, giving a different kind of appeal to both groups. Slowly over time I'm hoping we can collect some really cool stuff to decorate the place from both around Nepal and on various trips back home and around the region.

If you were a hamburger in Kathmandu, where would you hide?

Maybe it plays into stereotypes but if there is one food item I have really come to miss in this city it's a really good hamburger. Yes I'm American, yes I like hamburgers, and no you can't get one really worth eating here. Maybe that's how Nepali's in the U.S. feel about hunting down momos or dahl baht. When I've mentioned the lack of good burgers I'm often met with a curious response, as plenty of places claim to make them, and if that's the only type of burger you've ever had I suppose you think the claim a bit odd. But to use the former analogy it would be like me showing a Nepali a pile of plain over-cooked rice and some dryish lentils and saying, "What do you mean this isn't dahl baht?" Yes it would be rice and lentils, but no that isn't how you enjoy it.

One of the things that conspires against the creation of a good burger in this country is that it has several parts, none of which are popular or even in South Asian cuisine. Beef for example is not to be eaten as the cow in Hinduism is sacred. This leaves you with a few options, which is import the beef from India (also a Hindu country but apparently with less qualms about killing cows) or places like Australia. This inevitably means less fresh meat, and requires freezing which often reduces the quality in my opinion. That said, I've had some really good steaks here, so getting good cuts of beef is not impossible. Another option is to use an alternative  but similar animal such as water buffalo or yak. Now buff (as water buffalo is referred to) is OK, but it has a slightly different taste, different enough that I'm not a fan. Yak on the other hand is quite tough, but when ground up as burger it actually is quite good. Thing is that most places in Nepal that advertise yak are actually selling buff, and most of the actual yak meat I've eaten was in Tibet and not Nepal. So really just trying to find decent whole steaks and then grinding them locally would most likely be the best option. Most places though seem to settle for frozen buff which is the worst of both worlds.

More Than Just Salsa

There has been a strange trend as of late that when I meet people for the first time their first response is, "Hey you're the guy who sells salsa right?" Yes I am the salsa master, well at least according to the business cards that Kim had printed for me. It's not a bad thing to be known for as it is usually followed up with something like, "My room mate bought it and we both loved it so much we were eating it with a spoon." Which is a nice compliment, especially considering I don't even eat it with a spoon....well maybe the pomegranate.

This last weekend though my brand of Enlightened Salsa was no more, I'm rebranding and expanding into a wider array of food. If this first weekend was any indication, then it should be a success as I sold out of almost everything that I cooked up for the markets. The new items expand on the Mexican theme, providing things like; veg. chili, refried beans, and south west style pulled chicken (soon to be chipotle chicken when I get my peppers from Harilo). The larger expansion is into other American styles of cooking offering everything from Italian style pasta sauces to Tennessee style BBQ. This weeks items included BBQ Pulled Pork, Marinara sauce made with roasted red peppers, Mushroom Garlic pasta sauce, Bruschetta (which to be fair is just a slightly altered form of my old Greek salsa), Tzatziki, and Greek style triple strained yogurt.

Really the dairy products may be one of the largest areas I could expand into. The yogurt and tzatziki sold out about half way through the first day at the market. I've already been making my own butter, and butter milk but really haven't had any suitable packaging to sell it in. I'd also like to possibly move onto selling sour cream and possibly flavored cream cheeses if I can get the process down a bit more reliably, as I think those items would sell very well for the breakfast crowd. The problem with dairy is that it really needs refrigeration on site, and coolers here are absurdly expensive. My next order through Harilo will include a collapsible cooler which will make my expansion into dairy products possible.

Harilo also offers some room for further expansion, as you can get quite a few items from the States that aren't available here or items whose quality is vastly superior to what is available locally. Corn products for instance are a real problem here, and there is nothing worth using. Making BBQ mean you really want to have corn bread, and making Mexican dishes you really want corn tortillas. So in my shipment that is on the way I have a 4 pack of 20oz bags of Bob's Red Mill Cornbread mix and in my shipment I'm putting together now I'll have a cast iron tortilla press and a 10 Lb bag of Masa Harina so I can actually make tortillas. Beyond just corn products though I'm also able to purchase certain spices that you can't find here like the previously mentioned chipotle peppers, American style chili powder (which has a very different flavor than the local stuff) , the best BBQ sauce in Sweet Baby Ray's gallon containers (which is cheaper through Harilo than buying inferior quality stuff at Bhat Betini), and kitchen utensils like whisks which are apparently unavailable in Nepal. Who knew? But then what Nepali food would require a whisk to make? Once I have a whisk here I'd like to make home made mayo...possibly some flavored stuff, as my food processors whipping attachment just isn't capable of making it. Sure you can buy low quality brands of mayo here, but it's very expensive compared to the ingredients.

All of this is part of an expansion that I'm planning to do as a way to move into catering and hopefully a restaurant if the stars align for me. I'm putting together a business plan and a mock up menu for the restaurant idea, but as one can imagine getting hard numbers here is a bit tough. The idea though is to have a place/person that people can go to to get authentic North American style food, which is currently completely lacking in this city. I think there is a ton of potential for this, but there are some good sized hurdles too. Getting quality beef cuts in a Hindu country isn't as easy as walking down to the local butcher...I think it's still a crime to kill a cow. Cheeses such as Monterey Jack, Colby, Sharp Cheddars, Provolone, Swiss and Blue Cheese will all have to be imported (by the way I compared prices and it's half the price per unit weight to import through Harilo as it is to buy at Bhat Betini). Fountain drinks aren't the norm here and most people use bottles, but figuring out how to get fountain drink machines running here could mean a good size reduction in price and that would allow for free refills, which is something that is lacking and drives me crazy here. Then there is the whole planning prep in a country that is often lacking electricity and thus consistent access to refrigeration.

It's the difficulty though that I find attractive, because if you can solve the puzzle it's almost sure to turn a profit. It's a design and tuning issue, a combination of balancing numbers, creativity and quality. That kind of thing I've always found attractive, and it's the kind of thing I can throw all my time into and be perfectly happy doing so. So if you happen to be in Kathmandu, I'll be having more than just salsa available in the future. Hopefully soon I'll have something put together for catering, and I'll post all the info here. Until then may we all dream of six different kinds of Buffalo wings.

Super Bowl XLV- Nepal Style

What a great game that was, and congratulations to the Green Bay Packers for a well deserved victory! Getting to watch this game in Nepal accompanied by all the correct food took a little bit of American ingenuity and some sleep deprivation. The obstacles were quite numerous actually, and at several occasions I thought we would miss the better part of the game, but fate was on our side and in the end, Kim Donnie and I all got to enjoy some great food and a very good game.

There are two major problems, the first being the difficulty in finding a way to actually watch the game. Apparently it was being broadcast on some channel according to an article that Kim found, but we don't have a TV, and few- if any- bars would be showing the game, especially when you consider the kick off time (we'll get to that in a minute). Donnie has a TV in his room, but with load shedding increasing to 14 hours/day as of today there was no chance we could watch the whole game even if his TV got the correct channel due to the power outage. NFL.com was streaming the live game, but internet here is too slow to do live feeds. The solution I had come up with was to stream the audio and put up the play by play board from ESPN for the visual. I spoke with my dad on Skype the night before and we worked out a system where he ran a direct cable feed on his computer and had the webcam facing the screen to send the image back to me. We ran it full size on our screens, and though it was a bit blurry- it was the closest thing to a live feed we would be able to get, and was really rather decent considering the circumstances. Big thanks to my dad for the feed, which he had to check up on every once in a while to make sure it hadn't been lost on my end or his end.

A Mix of Cultural Events: Tibet, America, Bhutan, & Nepal

This month we've got a few events going on. First up this Friday is Losar, more commonly known as Tibetan New Year. Usually there are some celebrations out at Boudha where the Tibetan community of Kathmandu in large part lives. Kim and I went out there last year for the celebration and there were some tensions between Tibetan's who wanted to parade a portrait of the Dali Lama around the stupa and local authorities that are very sensitive to the wants and fears of the Chinese. I suspect it will mostly be lighthearted celebration and throwing some of that flour stuff up in the air while people cheer and chant stuff in a language that I can't comprehend. I really do love the people out at Boudha so I am looking forward to this.

Next we move back to my native United States as there is the upcoming Super Bowl next Monday morning which we will not be able to watch it appears. The only place that appears to be showing it is Phora, and as we are not members it doesn't look like we'll be seeing it there. So back up plan is in effect and the projector will get hooked up to the laptop which will have to stream the audio and have the play-by-play board from ESPN on. Now in some countries you might be able to find a stream of the full broadcast, but in Nepal the internet just isn't up to streaming live video feeds. The plan is currently to supply plenty of buffalo wings, pulled pork sandwiches, and nachos along with some beer and other light alcoholic drinks. A perfect start to a Monday morning with some football. Looking forward to a good game between the Packers and Steelers.

The following weekend we are leaving for a short five day trip to the small Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan. This country is a little difficult to get to and travel in, as the government sets a minimum amount of money to be spent per day and you have to receive a letter of invitation arranged by a travel agency to visit. After a few weeks of e-mails, scanning passports, and wiring cash we got our plane tickets and letters of invitation. One highlight for me will be visiting Taktsang Monastery, better known as tiger's nest, which sits on the side of a cliff roughly 3000 feet above the nearby valley. This is one of the most dramatically placed buildings on the planet and I've always wanted to go there since I first saw a photo of it. Our trip will also coincide with the Punahka festival which I think celebrates the victory over invading Tibetan forces and the result is lots of dancing, costumes and what should be a good time. Really looking forward to this trip and am not really sure what to expect.

After we get back it will be a week and a half to get things in order before Donnie and I set out to reach Everest Base Camp and the Gokyo Region. Yes I did this Trek just last Sept/Oct, but this time we will be walking in from Jiri, rhododendrons should be coming into bloom and I'll get another shot at going over the Cho La pass that I couldn't get to due to being turned back by the Ngozumpu glacier. I'm really looking forward to the part of the trek from Jiri to Lukla as I haven't done it since 2002 when the country was in the midst of civil war, I'm curious to see what those villages and towns are like along that part of the trail now. I remember many of the villages along that route fondly, and they have been some of the better ones I've stayed in amongst the middle hills of Nepal. That trail is also an endurance tester, as over the course of traversing the many ridges passes and valleys on your way to Everest your total elevation gain is higher than the summit of Mt. Everest, roughly 9000 meters, or 27,000feet. 

So there should be some fun things to talk about and pictures coming up soon, certainly an interesting month or two.

Interviews, Hot Wings, and a New Look

So let's see. I was about to post how I am getting a lot more comfortable with preparing good meals here. I've gotten very good at making pasta sauce from scratch, and it tastes great here. In Nepal you can get some quality vegetables cheap, and garlic, tomatoes and anything else for pasta sauce is easy to get. Tonight I had made a salad with organic lettuce tomatoes, cucumber and carrot topped with fresh rosemary, goat cheese and a mix of olive oil and balsamic, pasta and sauce and some whole wheat bread. Things looked great until a little inch worm said "hi!" to Kim. She went on, skeptical of the salad, when a second one inched its way to the edge of her plate. She almost threw the plate at me, and her face went a touch green. Sorry about that hon. I guess that is a drawback to organic lettuce.

How much is that chicken in the window?

So I finally got around to ordering some chicken today. I've thought of it a couple times while I was out, but every time the butcher shops near my apartment were closed, they seem to have a kind of odd schedule. As 5pm approached today and we were also low on most vegetables, I decided I'd give getting some chicken a try. I had no clue what to ask or if any of the butchers spoke English, but what the hell, I'm wasting away to nothing on this ridiculous vegetarian diet I'm on when I cook, so I had to try.
As the above picture shows, the chickens aren't prepared in quite the same way we are use to. They are quite dead, whole and out in the open, not cut into select meat parts and wrapped in plastic and styrofoam. The upside is that this is all mostly organic chicken with no hormones and is fairly good for you. The downside is the mental images of the flies that you know get all over the things. I just figure the flies are just on the skin, which I'm cutting off anyway.

So I get to the butcher counter and the guy kind of laughs and says "Namaste", and I return the greeting. I point to a chicken, and he makes a chopping motion toward it, and I shrug my shoulders and say "half?" I'm assuming you can order half the chicken. He says "OK" and proceeds to cut the chicken in two, weighs it and declares that it is 700 grams. I ask how much and he says 200 NRS. Now I know for this is high, I'm not sure what it should be, but I know this is more. But I'm happy enough that I am actually going to have chicken that I forget that I should barter the price down to something more reasonable and just pay the guy. I'll have to ask Pradip or the K.C. family down stairs how much chicken is per KG. The butcher offers to chop the chicken up for me, this is how most Nepali people cook their chicken just chopped up, bones and all. I decline and figure I'll de-bone it once I get home.

Lacking the fortitude to be a vegetarian

it was good to eat meat again!

Once home, I get to cleaning the chicken. It definitely has less meat on it than the ones back home, if you made chicken wings with this thing you'd be mostly gnawing on bone. Still it had a good amount of breast and thigh meat and it was easy enough to clean. Unlike the gutted chickens back home, this one still had internal organs like liver and such. I've never been one to eat chicken livers, but I might look up a recipe or something I can use them in since it looks like I'll be buying them. I cooked the chicken into an Indian based curry dish that is made with coconut milk, threw in some carrots and broccoli and made some Indian fried rice. Easily the most satisfying meal I've cooked for myself yet, and there were enough left overs for lunch tomorrow.