Biscuits

The Bhat Bhateni Supermarket has two full aisles dedicated to biscuits. They’re apparently very popular here. Our favorite at the moment is an oat bran biscuit called Hob-Nobs. There’s a Polish knockoff of them (sweeter, less oaty, not as good) that I had to buy just for the name…

 

The Pizza Quest Begins Tonight

There are two pizzas that people talk about in Kathmandu. Fire & Ice makes the most famous pizza in town, and the restaurant is something of an institution. Mike’s Breakfast, also an institution, is not a pizza restaurant, but on Fridays they do pizza and it’s said to be the best pizza available here.

Then the other day I was in the locker room at the Radisson getting dressed for a workout and I overheard a Nepali man asking an American man when his pizza restaurant was going to open. The American had a New York-via-L.A. accent and when I heard him say that their basic pizza was crust, tomato sauce, and cheese, “the soul of pizza,” my ears perked. The Nepali man was asking him what toppings were available and he seemed a bit miffed that potatoes were not one of them.

I asked the American what the story was. He said he just opened a week ago and had started the restaurant to give some of his workers work. I didn’t ask what his workers did when they weren’t making pizza. The place is called Sal’s Pizza, and, since there are now three pizzas in town that merit a try-out, I can officially declare it a quest. We shall try all of them!

(This is going to be a lot easier than the New York City edition was, I can tell you.)

We begin tonight at Mike’s Breakfast.