Where to Eat in Thamel: Wood-Fired Pizza and Beyond

Thanks to decades of trekkers passing through, Thamel feeds you almost anything: Nepali, Tibetan, Indian, Italian, Thai, Japanese, and Middle Eastern, often at budget prices.

The choice is part of the appeal and also a problem, because it is easy to waste your appetite on something mediocre. Here is how to eat well, starting with what the neighborhood does best.

Start With Wood-Fired Pizza

Pizza in the Himalaya sounds wrong until you have it after a trek, and Thamel does it properly. The standard option is the original Roadhouse Cafe on Chaksibari Marg, which has been baking pizza in a wood-fired oven since 1992, long before most of its neighbors existed.

The pizza turns up with a thin crust and char lines that hold throughout the meal. The four-cheese is one to order: Parmesan, mozzarella, goat cheese, and a wedge of yak cheese grown in Nepal, a combination that makes sense only here. The room has a Mediterranean palette of terracotta and mosaic, and a garden patio out back.

Then Eat Like a Local

Do not leave Nepal without eating the local food. The country's cuisine draws on Indian and Tibetan influences alongside the specialties of its many ethnic groups, and Thamel is a fine place to start:

Daal bhaat tarkari. The national dish: lentil soup, rice, and curried vegetables, usually with pickle and curd. It is what most Nepalis eat every day. Use your right hand only.
Momos. Tibetan dumplings Nepalis cannot live without, steamed or fried, filled with buff (water buffalo), chicken, or vegetables. The Newars of the Kathmandu Valley are great meat eaters, and buff is the meat of choice.
Thukpa. A Tibetan noodle soup that earns its place on a cold Kathmandu evening.
Sel roti with sweet milk tea. The classic Nepali light breakfast or snack.

Coffee in Thamel

Coffee has a serious following in Thamel. At Roadhouse Cafe, the pour is Segafredo Zanetti, sourced from Italy, and served all day. It has a consistency that turns into a morning habit faster than you expect.

Eating Without Leaving the Door

At Hotel Roadhouse, the cafe is a 60-second walk from any room, with a 15% guest discount on food. The same menu comes through room service.

The usual Thamel routine is to leave your hotel and head into the lanes every time you are hungry. That loop ends here. See the full hotel and cafe overview, and the wider first-timer's guide to Thamel for everything around the table.