Mandarin: Food trip home Many years ago I helped to create The Mandarin at The Everest Hotel and I built it around the Tibetan Hot Pot. Today an interior designer later and with a new Chef Huang Xing added it is a plush restaurant with unparalleled views of 180 degree of the Himalayas and food that goes from good to great. But the Gyakok, Hot Pot, is still there with its bubbling metal bowl that is full of prawns, meat and vegetables in a chicken broth that’s good for the soul. It is warmed by your anticipation and a chimney filled with live embers. You create variety with different sauces — I counted seven — and you have a Tibetan delight that is memorable. I decided to do what the Chinese did in 300BC. Says writer Ed Pearce, “The Chinese are dining on rich stews of meat and vegetables. They have little use for the foreign cereal, wheat. For them, it is food as a last resort.” Helped by Prahlad Thapa, who has run the restaurant for 12 years and has been at The Everest for 24 years (four more than my 20), we started with a Multi-flavoured Shredded Chicken in Spicy Sauce served cold. The chicken mixed with sesame seeds, coriander, soya sauce, chilli and vinegar, is a delectable kiss of fire. Prahalad and Bishnu Pokharel brought on two miracles — the Chilli Chicken in Spicy Honey Sauce and the Stir Fried Chicken with Cashewnuts. Both were flavoured with honey, both had a zing to them. The difference was in the timur and pepper that made the honey, explosive but sweet in the spicy honey sauce. The cashewnut chicken had honey that hit the taste buds first and the chilies, cooled by everything else, were a pleasant afterglow. “Our guests like gravies and they eat them with rice or noodles,” said Prahlad as he and Bishnu give us the Shredded Tenderloin with Celery and Sweet Pepper. It was a playful dish with its ginger and sesame oil mixture that was sometimes moist, sometimes crisp and sometimes soft, but always fascinating. The Cantonese Lamb with Spring Onions had what my dining companion Phillip Sthapit, an assistant manager sales, called Ela, (Newari for star annise) and its textures was sprightly and blithe, the taste was mild because it was Cantonese and the Ela made it enchanted. The 1st century AD had the Chinese eating from porcelain and the Mandarin has specially created dishes in rich colours that makes the food seem even better. The Vegetable Dumplings came in a ginger, garlic sauce with Chinese herbs and were drenched in gravy that had a mingling of tastes that were unusual but addictive. I like to think they had rhubarb, a much grown Chinese vegetable in them. In 1839 the Chinese were exporting rhubarb to England and stopped doing so in the hope of causing constipation and wining the first Opium War. Their ploy failed but rhubarb and Chinese food became one of the most famous exports of the country. At night the lights of Kathmandu stretch out in front of you from Mandarin, and in the morning it’s the timeless Himalayas, particularly the awesome Mt Phurbi-Ghyachu (6,660 meters), which seems a touch away. While eating at Mandarin you can wish upon a mountain or a star. Your wishes come true. For Mandarin feasting call Krishna Karki who is efficient and will do your bidding at 4780100.