Masala Kitchen Shinjuku

About Indo-Nepali food

Indo-Nepali is less a culinary tradition than a business reality. Nepali migrants opened kitchens in cities where customers already knew and wanted Indian food, so the menu is largely North Indian with the Nepali dishes the cooks actually grew up on sitting alongside it. The momo are usually the tell, and usually the best thing on the menu.

Order momo first, always. Then pick one curry from the Indian side and one Nepali dish if the menu has more than momo — thukpa in winter, dal bhat if you want to understand what the kitchen actually eats. Asking the staff what they cook for themselves is not a rude question here and usually produces the best answer on the menu.

Eating in Tokyo

Tokyo's South Asian food is dominated by a specific format: a Nepali-run kitchen serving a largely North Indian menu, built around a weekday lunch set of curry, enormous naan and a small salad. It is so consistent that it is effectively its own genre. Underneath it sits a smaller, more interesting layer of genuinely Nepali cooking, and a handful of serious regional Indian restaurants.