THE MOVEABLE FEAST: Food in high places

Kathmandu:

The China Mountain, which is on the top floor of The Royal Singhi Hotel, has a menu so huge it can be compared to a nineteenth century novel. There’s one difference. War and Pace never tasted so good. Thirty pages of delicacies make you come back to China Mountain over and over so you can, sort of, sample the menu in installments.

With me on this jaunt were Minty and Mintu Pande and a visiting almost-cordon-bleau-cook named Praveen that we discovered the knockout Hot and Sour soup. I know, I know EVERY Chinese joint serves Hot and Sour soup but at China Mountain they do it so well that despite their overly generous helpings, like Oliver Twist, you end up asking for more.

Over the years, I have evolved a These-Are-Some-Of-My-Favourite-Things from the first 15 pages of the menu while working my way through the next 15. For example, I always order the Shredded Chicken in Sichuan Sauce and while I joyously perspire because it’s hot, I dig into the Vegetable Noodles which have a distinctly ‘mushroomy’ taste to them to keep cool.

If that doesn’t work then I order the Sweet and Sour Chicken, which is unusual because large pieces of chicken crisply fried are in a sauce that is to die for.

The other day Marcus Cotton from Tiger Mountain in Pokhara invited me out for dinner to a place of my choosing. With fear and trembling, (Tiger Mountain, Pokhara, thanks to Marcus has a menu worth travelling miles for), I suggested China Mountain.

To my favourite menu Marcus ordered a prawn dish. It was exquisite. The only problem is

we’ve forgotten the name. Several visits and samplings are now called for. All the prawn dishes are perfection. Watch this space for a complete description, but don’t hold your breath, I’m going to do it over several visits that shall be savoured.

For vegetarians, a bewildering choice unfolds. You’ve got to ask the maitre de whom I call Wagleji because once, long ago, while rattling off dishes he mentioned that his name was Wagle quickly adding I’d enjoy the Mushrooms And Stir fried Veggies. I did. Very much. But I don’t to this day know if my helper’s name is Wagle or is it the name of some culinary creation in the pages I haven’t reached?

And he like the rest of the staff is too polite and too helpful to correct me.

I have a debate going on within myself if I should take a politically incorrect friend of mine to China Mountain. He is the best cook of Anglo-Indian food in Nepal, but he goes slightly mad in Chinese restaurants. He embarrasses every one by ordering ‘flied lice’ and I don’t have the heart to shut him up by calling him a plick, which is, as we all know, an ancient Chinese curse.

The answer perhaps, lies in stunning him into silence by ordering the memorable Peking/Beijing Duck, the menu’s opening dish. It humbles the most fastidious foodie with its accompaniments like plum sauce and a fine bread which you wrap the crisp meat and everything in.

China Mountain is run by a family of happy Chinese who see to it that the service is friendly and swift but not so swift that you can’t enjoy the views from the top floor of The Royal Singhi Hotel, arguably the fifth highest building in the Valley.