Tibet tabled
New restaurant is unique in Santa Fe
For a stretch starting in about 2014, it was all the rage to blend butter — yes, butter — in coffee. Some aficionados still swear by it. The grass-fed variety of the pantry staple, advocates said, yielded a healthier cup of Joe, complete with brain-boosting omega-3 fatty acids and healthy fats to keep the caffeine crash at bay. Nutritionists even said buttered coffee sped up metabolism, leading to faster fat burning.
Turns out, though, millennial health nuts weren’t the first to spike their morning pick-me-up with churned dairy bliss.
That credit likely goes to Tibetans, whose famous butter tea emerged as a Himalayan staple in the 13th century. Butter tea — a soul-warming blend of black tea, yak butter, milk and salt — yes, salt — remains popular in the region today, a fatty shield against the bitter cold of the “roof of the world.”
And now, Santa Fe diners can try a mugful of the confusingly savory concoction, along with other Tibetan favorites, at Santa Fe’s only Tibetan restaurant.
Tibet Kitchen opened shop this past week in the Albertsons shopping center near the corner of South St. Francis Drive and West Zia Road. The sushi joint Maki Yaki, which closed about a year ago, used to occupy the spot.
Though his family hails from the Tibetan city of Shigatse, Gonpo Trasar, Tibet Kitchen’s proprietor, was born in India.
His family and thousands of others fled Tibet during the 1959 Tibetan uprising, a violent clash between Tibetan rebels and their Chinese overlords. A repressive Communist China had claimed sovereignty over the region in 1951.
Emigrants fled by the thousands, along with the Dalai Lama, to India, where they have lived in what Trasar described as built-out refugee camps since 1959. Trasar’s mom still lives there.
So when it came time to craft his buffet-lunch and dinner menus, Trasar decided to include a curry ($11.99) and chai tea ($1.99), both Indian offerings co-opted by displaced Tibetans, as an homage to his family’s adoptive home.
“If you go to a Tibetan restaurant, one good thing is, if you like a little bit of Indian taste and Nepali taste or Tibetan taste, … you’ll find everything in one place,” said Trasar, 42.
Both menus also feature chow mein ($8.99) and vegetable fried rice ($7.99). But the real culinary intrigue here is the traditional Tibetan food.
Shapta ($11.99), a beef, tomato, bell pepper and garlic sauté, pairs nicely with Tingmo ($2.99), Tibetan steamed buns. Trasar compared Shabaley ($9.99), another staple, to empanadas. Both are available on the dinner menu, as is Gyuma ($9.99), fried Tibetan beef blood sausage.
Every culture in the region has its take on dumplings. Tibetans craft momos, simple flour-and-water casings artfully primped and puckered around a filling. At Tibet Kitchen, take your pick of the beef, veggie or chive versions, which range in price from $8.99 to $9.99.
On the roof of the world, as Tibet is known (Trasar’s family’s hometown is perched 12,467 feet above sea level), not many vegetables grow, so meat, hearty root veggies and grains are all-important. Trasar’s vegetable momos are stuffed with potatoes, peas, onions, spinach and cabbage.
In Tibet — and throughout the Tibetan diaspora — momos are a kind of delicacy, eaten on Sundays and special occasions. Every home cook has a recipe. For his, Trasar tapped a local well of knowledge.
Santa Fe has a small but vibrant Tibetan population. Since 1989, when U.S. officials agreed to relocate 1,000 displaced Tibetans and their families, between 30 and 40 families have set down roots here in the high-desert soil.
Trasar said he hosted something of an informal momo cook-off among the community’s home chefs to help determine whose recipe tasted best. He’s still tweaking the recipe as Tibet Kitchen gets off the ground.
Equally important to — or perhaps more important than — the momo itself is the chile sauce in which it’s dipped. In Tibetan restaurants, Trasar said, the momos all wind up tasting more or less the same, so diners choose their restaurant based on the quality of the sauce, made with spicy chile (New Mexico red in this case), garlic, tomatoes, cilantro and onions.
“We can handle your heat,” said Trasar’s wife,
Namgyal Tsewang.
Trasar honed his restaurant skills in his early days in the United States. He arrived here about 20 years ago, living first in Chicago, then Salt Lake City, then Chicago again.
In Salt Lake City, his brother owns a Tibetan restaurant, and Trasar cut his teeth there, learning the front- and back-of-house ropes.
These days, his niece also runs a restaurant, House of Tibet, in Salt Lake City.
Trasar met Tsewang in Chicago, and they moved to Santa Fe for her job. Tsewang is a family medicine doctor at Christus St. Vincent DeVargas Health Center.
The duo bought a house last year and vowed to stay in Santa Fe, a city Tsewang described as warm and welcoming.
“We’re very grateful for what New Mexico and Santa Fe have offered, and we want to give back,” she said.
Still, despite barely having lived there at all (Trasar and his family returned to Tibet for a few years when he was 7), Trasar and Tsewang, like most of the Tibetan refugees in Santa Fe, retain a special bond with place and culture — a connection made stronger by food.
“Being away from your homeland, your food gives comfort to your soul,” Tsewang said.