NEIGHBORHOOD JOINT

 

 

It’s hard not to write about the exceptional. Sometimes, however, exceptional traits are to be found in the mundane. A fast-food joint with the greatest hard packed milkshakes from some tiny local creamery. A rose, as it were, growing in Harlem. 

 

The truth is that the usual state of most affairs is lame, and it’s the task of any inquisitive traveler or adventurer to seek out those brilliances from the fog, to extract the beauty from each caterpillar, so to speak and to share those stories with whoever we can slow down enough to listen.

 

My last restaurant report from Kathmandu featured the best the country has to offer. Today, I’ll be discussing where I go most often as a non-expat living at Buddha Stupa, the largest and most holy site in Tibetan Buddhism and a hotbed of international intrigue, geopolitics and cuisine.

 

The stupa is a huge, half-mile prayer-wheel encircled pyramid topped with a pair of eyes and a wild gold staircase leading to an intricate gilt parasol covered finial of an utterly captivating nature. There are a dozen monasteries within a five minute walk and the stupa is the most popular tourist destination in Nepal. Thousands of souls a day travel the circumference of the stupa, in what is known as walking a Kora, either chanting mantras, fingering prayer beads, holding hands with their girlfriends, or looking for a good deal on cashmere, brass, rugs and paintings. Most tourists are Nepalis coming for their first visit and will, statistically, never return. Many are on their first or second date. 

 

 

 

 

And all of us are hungry.

 

The stupa is home to Japanese, Korean, Thai and myriad Chinese restaurants. There’s bubble tea, of course, and pizza and popcorn and ice cream and cheesecake and truly incredible espresso-based drinks of every variety around every turn, and so it seems somewhat incredible that the place I frequent most often is a ten minute walk away. 

 

 

 

 

It’s not a great location and you must pass a hundred good restaurants to get there, but Lavie Garden’s warm embrace begins with a trellised tunnel of light and ivy ending with the port-cochere, a covered entrance, opening up to an antique colonial style villa. While everyone poses in front of a second sign staged just for that purpose, with live blooming flowers and greenery of every hue, the garden behind the house is a small maze of trees and umbrellas, free-standing seating stages and those for the band, bars for booze and fresh herbaceous mocktails, and swings for kids and their giddy parents. 

 

Yes, Lavie Garden is a modern Nepali beer garden with room for everyone. Kids run cheerily from nook to vine, lovers stare into each other’s eyes behind rhododendrons. And groups of businessmen drink whiskey and check their phones for anything to break their dour frowns. Lavie Garden is happening. It’s always packed and yet the truly top notch staff never fail to find me a seat. I won’t admit how often I’ve been, but I really do also frequent every other restaurant, new and ancient, in the city as often as any foody athlete, nearly giddy at the cheap prices and taxi fare, ever could. I’ve never finished a case of wine with my partner like the once revered Mario Batali, but I have been known to have two breakfasts before brunch and dinner three times: 5pm, 8 and 11. For the variety of food and company only, of course.

 

My young Nepali wife gags at the street food I devour, from samosa chat — a crushed potato filled pastry served with lentils, curd and chilies (I’ve seen it with Cheetos) — to pani puri, the puff pastry-like shell filled with chutneys and mashed potato. But not only is it delicious, Lavie Garden has figured out how to fuse the best ingredients with international tastes into classic local standards. Even my picky Brahman wife will try things she was never allowed to as a child, however mouth watering they may have smelled.

 

 

 

 

Along with these staples and barbecue, or sekuwa as it’s called, Lavie Garden has pizza, burgers, the ubiquitous local dumplings, called momo, and any number of so-called continental dishes. Where the tandoori chicken and cheese “butter bomb” lands on this spectrum is anyone’s guess, but the appetizers seem to satisfy a huge cross-section of the country, from tourists and charity workers to the those businessmen and their wives often eating separately at a huge girls-only birthday, engagement or baby parties. 

 

The music varies from excellent to tolerable and most often is a single male vocalist with his guitar crooning nineties classics and Nepali hits, often begrudgingly announcing that because there are so many separate birthday parties, he’s going to combine them and subject us to only one heartfelt rendition of that classic dinner interrupter. 

 

Normally, such family-friendly, keg heavy joints are not my scene, but the service brings me back time and again for a perfectly crisp chicken parm or a buffalo burger with all the trimmings, or the local basa fish  (strangely indistinguishable from cod) and chips. The Sherpa Craft beers are all on tap and the Sherpa Red, for a hops avoiding ale drinker like myself, is both smooth and nuanced and rarely have I seen one unfinished by anyone.

 

My favorite Captain is named Rumi, who remembers I prefer unbottled water and pasta instead of fries. He plucks a fresh paper napkin each time a dollop of sauce needs removing or a fry goes astray. Smiling, welcoming, consistent and genuine, this type of environment can really only exist when the front and back of house respect and value each other, and perhaps most importantly, when management has their backs. At Lavie Garden, everyone seems like family and the staff are truly grateful you’re there.

 

 

Location: mediocre

Food: good

Ambiance: charming

Service: exceptional