Dining · Nepal
Krishnarpan
Dwarika's Nepali tasting room turns the map of the country into a meal, from Terai lentils to mountain cheese, in as many as twenty-one courses.
An offering first
Krishnarpan is the Nepali fine-dining restaurant of The Dwarika’s Hotel at Battisputali, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Its name speaks of an offering to Krishna, and the meal opens with one.
When Nepali Times reviewed it in 2015, the first course was samay baji, a Newar assortment of legumes, spices, vegetables and meat used in religious ceremonies, with a little set aside for the gods. Aila, a Newar spirit, followed, poured from a long-necked brass vessel into small clay cups, with a few drops again for the gods.
Not only Newar
The opening rituals are Newar, but the restaurant is not. The same review called it “a true pan-Nepali restaurant reflecting this country’s ethnic and culinary diversity”, and the hotel now presents the menu as a procession of plates carrying Nepal’s geography from the plains to the peaks: lentils for the riverbeds of the Terai, greens from winter fields, yak cheese for altitude.
Guests choose the length, from six courses to twenty-one. Krishnarpan serves dinner only, by reservation. The produce comes from the hotel’s own farms; the recipes, in the hotel’s words, belong to family and to generations past.
How the meal has moved
In 2015 the sequence ran from samay baji and choila, marinated water buffalo, through a Terai course of puri with spiced potato and chickpeas, to momos served on betel leaf. A full dal bhat with seasonal vegetables and achar came next, and sikarni, a cinnamon-scented yoghurt, closed the meal.
Nearly a decade earlier, in 2006, The Himalayan Times had found a different emphasis: chyau ko sekuwa, a mushroom version of a kebab usually made with meat, gundruk ko jhol, a soup of fermented mustard greens and soybeans, and a saffron kheer to finish. The room then was red and black, with low seating.
Service in costume
In 2015 the staff wore the dress of several of Nepal’s communities, among them Magar, Newar, Gurung, Chhetri and Sherpa. Guests took home the menu and a red clay brick token stamped with one of the Astamangala, the eight auspicious symbols, and regulars received aprons embroidered with their names.
In 2006 the restaurant was run by Sangeeta, daughter of the hotel’s founders Dwarika and Ambica Shrestha. Her summary of the idea still fits the menu today: “Our food reflects all of Nepal.”
Sources: The Dwarika’s; Nepali Times; The Himalayan Times