Nepal Ultimate $50 Food Challenge🇳🇵

Harry’s first video in Nepal, and he uses food as the way into the country: his stated premise is that Nepal’s cultural diversity shows up on the plate, and the day is built to prove it. Four meals across Kathmandu with Raj, a local guide who drives and picks the places — a Newari restaurant cut into a hillside up lanes Harry says he could never have found, a sekuwa barbecue that runs on a wood oven hot enough that he retreats from the kitchen, hand-pressed noodles in the Tibetan quarter of Boudha, and dal bhat to close.

He is right about the range. The four meals have almost nothing in common with each other — a Newari platter of buffalo and beaten rice, charcoal barbecue, cold noodles that read as Southeast Asian, and the subcontinental staple — which is the argument he set out to make.

Key moments

• [01:09] Raj is on the phone picking the route. Harry’s reasoning: a local is how you find the good places.
• [02:12] The Newari restaurant, up a steep hill and down thin lanes, with rice fields visible from the roof.
• [04:30] Into the kitchen — momos being folded at speed, dried meat, and a spice bench he films at length.
• [06:18] Yomari being shaped by hand, sitting on the floor, from sugar and flour.
• [06:53] Raksi poured from a height into the cup, which takes some skill.
• [08:05] Raksi is distilled from rice. He compares it to vodka but stronger, and the etiquette matters: it’s offered to guests in any house, drunk alongside the meal rather than to get drunk, and refusing is allowed.
• [09:12] The platter — buffalo, beaten rice, marinated potato, egg, vegetables and a thick bread, in a spread of colours he compares to a thali.
• [12:25] Beaten rice, which he has never eaten before and says looks and tastes something like porridge.
• [13:35] Bone marrow inside a buffalo bone: crunchy shell, pure fat inside, and his first time trying it.
• [14:39] Bara — a thick lentil pancake topped with egg, which his hosts call Nepali pizza. No meat at all, and the guide’s own favourite.
• [15:47] Chatamari, the thin-bread version with meat through it.
• [16:50] He refuses to rank them.
• [19:20] Yomari, the sweet dumpling, which turns out to be full of hot syrup.
• [19:59] The restaurant won’t let him pay.
• [22:30] Sekuwa Corner for barbecue.
• [23:51] The oven: wood-fired, with trays of meat lowered in and the fat dripping through. He calls it the hottest thing he has stood next to, and cannot understand how the cook works there.
• [24:23] Twenty minutes a tray.
• [27:16] Pork off the coals — caramelised, fatty, not spicy at all, and the best thing of the four meats.
• [28:32] A puffed-rice salad he compares to Rice Krispies, with vegetables and spice through it.
• [29:02] Goat head, eye included. He is honest that it doesn’t look appetising and eats it anyway.
• [30:12] Why it’s served: high protein, given to people who are ill and to pregnant women, and normally made into a soup rather than eaten like this.
• [31:18] The prices here are ordinary — it’s somewhere locals come with friends and a beer, not a special occasion.
• [31:53] Pakora, and a buffalo so charred it’s nearly black, which he likes.
• [34:38] Boudha: busy, local, full of shops selling fake climbing gear, and a stupa far larger than the monkey temple he visited earlier in the week.
• [35:19] Free for Nepalis, 500 rupees for foreigners.
• [35:52] You walk it clockwise, touching the prayer wheels as you go.
• [36:25] A heavily Buddhist and Tibetan quarter, with monks everywhere.
• [36:48] The Laughing Center, for what he’s told are the laughing noodles.
• [37:03] The noodle press: dough fed in, flattened, cut and trimmed by one machine, then sold on to restaurants.
• [40:28] The laughing noodles arrive cold, dressed with chilli, soy, garlic and vinegar — and made gluten-free, with the extracted gluten served separately alongside.
• [41:00] A chopstick lesson, quickly abandoned for cutlery.
• [42:46] The spicy version, which he underestimates and feels several seconds later.
• [44:35] The stupa at night. He explains what the prayer flags mean — the colours are the elements, the writing is prayers, and the wind carries them — and that the Tibetan community here are largely refugees the Nepalese government allowed to stay.
• [46:26] A Thakali kitchen in Thamel, Kathmandu’s nightlife quarter, for dal bhat. His dad joins them.
• [47:26] The plate: rice, dal, vegetables, chicken, spinach, pickles, a cracker and yoghurt — ten separate things, every one tasting different.
• [49:15] Why it’s the national staple: cheap and easy to make, and eaten every single day by most people.
• [50:22] The yoghurt is dessert, eaten off the same plate.
• [51:28] Eaten with the hands, badly, and he’s told there’s no wrong way to do it.

Extracted pages

• Place: Kathmandu
• Country: Nepal
• Tips: Travel with a local guide, Insist on paying