Tibetan
Momos and butter tea at 4,000m altitude, tsampa roasted barley powder, yak butter sculpting — the high plateau kitchen.
Tibetan Momos
Yak or vegetable dumplings, the offering at every Tibetan home and the Lhasa street snack.
View page →Tibet's table sits at 3,500-5,000 meters where the air is thin, the wind is constant, and the staple crops are barley, root vegetables, and yak. The defining grain is tsampa — barley roasted then ground into flour, mixed with butter tea or water into a paste eaten with fingers as the daily bread. Butter tea (po cha) is drunk dozens of times per day: black tea churned with yak butter and salt into an emulsion that's calories, warmth, and lip-balm against the wind all at once. Momos — steamed dumplings of yak, mutton, or vegetables — are the festival food. Thukpa is the noodle soup. Sha balep is meat-stuffed fried bread. Chang is the home-brewed barley beer. The cuisine is the world's most-isolated, the food of monasteries and yak-herding nomads, and the most-distinctive at high altitude.
The Palate
Start Here
Yak or mutton minced with onion and ginger, sealed in thin wheat skins with a pleated top, steamed in tiered bamboo baskets. Served with sepen, a tomato-chili dipping sauce.
Why start here · Tibetan momos are the original. The thin-skin pleated dumpling spread from here across Nepal, India, Bhutan. The yak filling can't be faked elsewhere.
The Pantry
See all 58 ingredients›
Herbs & Spices
Three Regions
Three regional kitchens — Central Tibetan (Lhasa momos, tsampa, butter tea), Amdo NE (Qinghai noodles, Hui-Muslim influence), Kham E (yak-meat heavy, Sichuan chili influence). Tap a region to see its table.
How They Cook
Techniques that define this cuisine
