What to eat in Tibet, and what we will not pretend about it

What it is instead is coherent. Every dish on the plateau is a sensible answer to a hard question: how do you feed people at altitude, in cold, with barley, yak, dairy and very little else. Understood that way it is genuinely interesting, and some of it is delicious.

And Lhasa is a separate conversation, because Lhasa eats considerably better than the plateau does.

The plateau repertoire

Tsampa. Roasted barley flour, the staple that underwrites everything. It is mixed with butter tea in a bowl, worked with the fingers into a dough, and eaten. Nomads carry it dry because it needs no cooking. As an eating experience it is plain and slightly nutty and it will not be the highlight of your trip. As an object it explains more about Tibetan life than any museum, and you should try it once with someone who can show you how it is worked.

Momos. Steamed or fried dumplings, filled with yak meat and onion, or with potato and cheese, or with spinach. The best ones are excellent, the pastry thicker and chewier than a Chinese dumpling, served with a chilli sauce that varies from mild to serious. This is the dish most travellers end up ordering repeatedly and it is a good instinct.

Thukpa. A noodle soup with vegetables and usually meat, hand-pulled noodles in the better places. Warming, filling, forgiving and available everywhere from Lhasa to a roadside shack at 15,000 feet (4,570 m). On a cold driving day it is exactly right.

Thenthuk. Thukpa’s better sibling, with torn flat noodle pieces instead of strands. If you see it, order it.

Yak. Dried into strips and eaten like jerky, which is chewy and salty and an acquired thing. Stewed with potato and radish, which is good. In momos, which is where most visitors meet it. Yak is leaner and stronger tasting than beef and it is not gamey.

Butter tea, po cha. Tea churned with salt and yak butter into something closer to a thin broth than a drink. Almost nobody likes it at first. It does help at altitude, because it is salt, fat and fluid in one cup, which is precisely what a dehydrated body at 12,000 feet needs. Try it in a monastery courtyard or a village house, where it will be refilled the moment you put the cup down. If you genuinely cannot manage it, leave the cup full rather than emptying it, which is understood as a polite no.

Sweet milk tea. The other tea, made with milk and sugar in the Indian manner, and the one most visitors actually drink. Every tea house in Lhasa serves it by the thermos.

Chang. Barley beer, cloudy, mildly sour, home-brewed, and served at festivals and in villages. A word of caution: alcohol and altitude are a poor combination, particularly in the first days, and we would leave chang until late in the trip.

Dresil. Sweet rice with butter, raisins and droma root, served at celebrations. A good thing to be offered.

Curd and cheese. Fresh yoghurt, which is excellent, and dried cheese cubes that are as hard as stone and dissolved slowly in the mouth over an hour. The cheese is not a snack in the sense you mean.

What Lhasa adds

Lhasa is a proper small city with a mixed population, and it eats accordingly. This is where the food half of a Tibet trip actually happens.

Sichuan restaurants, and there are many good ones, with the full repertoire of mapo tofu, twice-cooked pork, dry-fried beans and fish with pickled greens. After a week of thukpa this tastes like a holiday.

Nepali and north Indian restaurants, several of them long established, doing dal, curries, tandoori and very good naan. The Nepali kitchens in the old town are a reliable answer for vegetarians.

Tibetan restaurants aimed at visitors, a handful of which cook the traditional repertoire seriously and well, with yak steak, momos in several varieties, and dishes from Amdo and Kham that you will not meet on the road.

Tea houses, which are the thing to actually seek out. Plain rooms full of local people, sweet milk tea by the thermos, momos and thukpa, and a bill of two or three dollars. Sitting in one for an hour on an acclimatisation day is one of the better things you can do in the city, and it is in every route we build. See Lhasa in three days.

Bakeries and coffee. Lhasa has developed a real cafe culture in the last decade, with decent coffee and baked goods in the old town. On day two, when you have no appetite and a headache, a coffee and a pastry may be all you want and there is no shame in it.

What the road offers

Outside Lhasa the choice narrows sharply and you should know that before you go.

Gyantse and Shigatse have Tibetan restaurants, Sichuan restaurants and hotel dining rooms. Perfectly adequate, unremarkable, and enough variety for two or three nights.

Roadside stops on the plateau are a single room with a stove, serving thukpa, momos, instant noodles and tea. They are warm and welcome and the food is basic.

The Everest area is whatever the guesthouse kitchen has, which is usually thukpa, instant noodles, eggs and tea, cooked at an altitude where water boils below the temperature that cooks things properly. This is a night to have brought your own snacks for.

We tell our travellers to carry chocolate, nuts and dried fruit for the long driving days, not because anyone will go hungry but because appetite at altitude is unpredictable and a three hour stretch between stops is normal.

Appetite, altitude and eating enough

This is the practical part and it matters more than the menu.

At altitude, appetite drops. Many people simply do not want to eat for the first two days in Lhasa, and that is normal. It is also the thing to push back on, gently. Eat even without appetite, because the body is working harder than it feels like it is. Drink far more water than seems necessary, up to three or four litres a day. Avoid alcohol entirely for the first two days.

Rich, heavy meals sit badly in the first days. Soup, rice, noodles, tea and something plain are better than a yak steak on your first night, however much you fancy it after the flight.

Dietary requirements

Vegetarian is workable in Lhasa and constrained outside it. The Nepali and Indian restaurants in the old town are the reliable answer in the city, and potato-and-cheese momos and vegetable thukpa are available almost everywhere. On the road the choice thins to noodles, eggs, rice and vegetables. Tell us early and we brief every stop in advance rather than leaving you to negotiate at a counter at 15,000 feet.

Vegan is harder, because butter and dairy are the foundation of the cuisine. It is possible in Lhasa and genuinely difficult on the Everest road, and we will say so before you book rather than after.

Gluten is difficult, since barley and wheat noodles are the staples. Rice dishes and Sichuan cooking help in Lhasa. Beyond it, the options narrow to the point where we would want a conversation before we build the route.

The honest summary

Eat momos and thenthuk on the road and enjoy them. Try butter tea once, properly, in a monastery or a house rather than a restaurant. Sit in a Lhasa tea house for an hour with sweet milk tea. Have one good Sichuan dinner and one serious Tibetan one in the city. Carry snacks. And do not come to Tibet for the food, because you would be coming for the wrong thing and the plateau has a great deal else to offer.

For the wider picture of eating across the country Tibet sits within, see what to eat in China.

Plan this trip

Tell us how you eat and your named Tibet specialist will build the route with the restaurants, the tea houses and the dietary briefing handled in advance. Free, and with no obligation.

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Keep reading

• Tibet: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Lhasa in three days
• How many days do you need in Tibet?
• What a trip to Tibet costs
• Monasteries and the Tibetan table in 10 days
• All our Tibet trips

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