Lhasa eat · Eating in Lhasa
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Eating in Lhasa
Eating in Lhasa
A lot of nice and comfortable restaurants can be found in Lhasa old district. Most of them are located near the Jokhang Temple along Beijing Zhong Lu (or called Beijing Road Middle) and its tributary road Zang Yiyuan Lu (or called Tibetan Hospital Road). Some of them serve western food, Nepali and Indian food. Examples are Snowland Restaurant, Lhasa Kitchen, Naga French Restaurant, Tashi Restaurant. Each meal can be as cheap as USD$3 per person (price at 2005 October). On the southeast corner of Barkhor Street, there is a well-known Tibetant restaurant among backpackers -- Makye Ame - means beautiful woman. Sitting at this second-floor restaurant gives you an amazing view, especially at sunset, of the part of the Barkhor Street which is full of pilgrams moving in clockwise direction. The location of Makye Ame is unbeatable, but the food is nothing to write home about. The smaller Tibetan restaurants, especially the teahouses are much cheaper and serve more tasty food.
Snowland Restaurant Tenjieling Road #4, near Jokhang Square, phone 0891-6337323 Large menu features a mix of Western, Napali, Indian and Tibetan food. Good service, good food, very popular.
New Mandala Restaurant with roof top Garden, located in front of Jokhang Temple, phone 86-0891-6342235. Indian, Nepali, Tibetan and some Western dishes. Roof top has good views of the city. Try the Yak sizzler.
Tengyelink Cafe. Great Yak Steak, great atmosphere. Best food to be found in Lhasa. Cheap breakfast options are available.
For Chinese restaurants, though usually poorly-decorated, meals are much cheaper. A plate of beef noodles can be as cheap as USD$0.7 and you can have a full meal including drinks for less than €4! Most of the Chinese restaruants, however, serve Sichuan's spicy cuisine. In recently years, a lot of Chinese, most of them from Sichuan and Shannxi provinces, moved to Lhasa for business.
Apart from eating at restaurants, you can buy food or snacks in the main supermarkets, all around Beijing Zhong Lu.
Hong Yan
Le Bai Long
Si Fang
inside Lhasa Department Mall
Yak meat. Most restaurants sell Yak meat and it is a must try in Tibet. Yaks are actually cattle that are adapted to the highlands. Dried yak meat is available at all supermarkets, as is another Tibetan staple, tsampa.
Although Tibetan restaurants are more traditional and full of history, to the western traveler the Chinese food might seem more diverse and more appealing than the greasy boiled yak meat typically served in the Tibetan ones. Westerners also might avoid the traditional Tibetan tea which is in fact black tea with yak butter in it and is typically being kept warm in heat insulating containers for quite some time.
Be prepared with at least a few basic food describing words as in many of the restaurants they only speak chinese!
Be prepared to learn to use chop sticks as some restaurants do not have forks, spoons or knives.
For those Homesick after weeks of Chinese food, tuck into steak and red wine at Oxygen in the Four Points Sheraton on Lin Kuo East.
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Lhasa Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.