Regular visitors to our stall in Oxford's Gloucester Green may already be familiar with this smiling face. The new addition to the Taste Tibet team is Chef Namdi. Namdi hails from Tibet, but he spent many years working in restaurants and bars in Belgium. Welcome Namdi! Last Saturday we threw Namdi in at the deep end with Taste Tibet's second university college ball of the 2017 season. Hertford College is situated just next to two of Oxford's most famous landmarks, the Bridge

Great news for fans of Taste Tibet! We are starting up a Saturday stall in Oxford's Gloucester Green market, beginning this weekend (04/03/17). We gave up our Saturday pitch two years ago, when our stall started to gain fame and we couldn't make enough momos! The problem is even worse now. But we've decided to run a kind of halfway house on Saturdays, rather than not running at all. We can't offer full portions of momos, but come for your curry fix, plus weekly specials, and

Tibetan New Year takes place on February 28th this year. We will be celebrating with Tibetan friends at the weekend, and probably with momos and beer. But this is not traditional fare. While momos inevitably form part of the New Year's celebration in Tibet, the most traditional dishes that are prepared during Losar are enjoyed only at this time of year. Tibetan guthuk, the barley-based soup served every New Year's Eve, is one of these. Hugely symbolic, but always surprising,

For centuries, Tibet was a largely unexplored land. The Silk Road did not traverse the great peaks of this mountainous region, and traders and explorers were kept at bay. Tibetan people did not welcome the outsiders who dared to scale the world's highest peaks for a glimpse of their central plain, and this was a no-go area for map makers. But Tibetan people themselves were never shy to venture out, and indeed made frequent journeys beyond their own mountain passes. Tibetan tr

Back home, my family are getting ready for Losar, or Tibetan New Year. This is without doubt the biggest celebration of the year, but in my village everyone always celebrates a little earlier than the actual event, as the farmers usually take off for the new season in advance of any official celebrations. The main reason is that our animals need to feed in pastures new: grass is sparse in the village area during winter. This new year the village is celebrating super early. Mo

Happy new year everyone! Taste Tibet spent the holidays in NYC, visiting friends and family. The ulterior motive was a scoping out of the New York Tibetan food scene, which is largely concentrated in Queens. There are probably around 10,000 Tibetan people living in New York City, a dizzying figure when compared to populations in the UK, where numbers total just seven or eight hundred country-wide (and about fifteen in Oxford, which we had thought wasn't bad!). The result is a