Eat your way from the Terai to Everest.

Buffalo momo are the original and still the definitive Kathmandu dumpling, cheap enough to be everyday food and rich enough to feel like a treat. Buffalo mince carries far more fat and flavour than chicken, so the filling releases a mouthful of hot broth when you bite in. Ordering a plate of ten with extra achar is a ritual for students, office workers and taxi drivers across the valley.

Often called the Nepali pizza by visitors, chatamari is a paper-thin crepe of fermented-free rice batter cooked on a griddle and finished with minced buffalo, egg and aromatics. Newar families traditionally make it for festivals, family gatherings and the arrival of guests rather than as everyday food. It is eaten straight from the pan, folded or torn by hand, with a pinch of ginger and a fiery tomato achar on the side.

Chatpate is puffed rice tossed to order with crushed instant noodles, raw onion, chilli and a hard squeeze of lime, mixed by hand in a battered steel bowl at the roadside. It is sharper and more sour than Indian bhel puri, pulled in a different direction by mustard oil and a pinch of timur that leaves a faint tingle on the lips. School gates, bus parks and evening pavements across Nepal run on it, and it is always eaten from a paper cone within minutes of being made.

Chhwela is charred, heavily spiced buffalo meat, and it is probably the single dish most people associate with Newar cooking. The classic haku chhwela is scorched over a rice-straw fire so the smoke soaks into the meat before it is tossed with mustard oil, chilli and timur; the gentler manaa chhwela boils the meat first and skips the char. It is standard on the Samay Baji platter and standard again in the evening, eaten with beaten rice and a glass of aila.

Sekuwa is meat marinated in mustard oil, yoghurt, ginger-garlic and toasted Nepali spices, then skewered and grilled over charcoal until the edges char and smoke. Eastern Nepal, especially Dharan and Tarahara in Sunsari district, is famous for it, and roadside sekuwa houses grill to order all evening. It is eaten with chiura, sliced onion and a sharp achar, and traditionally washed down with raksi.

Chiya is the drink that punctuates every Nepali day: strong black tea boiled hard with milk, sugar and a handful of crushed spices until it is sweet, tannic and thoroughly perfumed. The masala version leans on ginger, cardamom, clove and Nepali bay leaf (tejpat), which lends a floral note you rarely find in chai elsewhere. It is poured into small glasses at tea stalls, offered to every visitor within minutes of arrival, and drunk at all hours.