Postcards from Tibet

How is it that the supermarkets can stock the same set of vegetables all the year round? In the UK, most of us never stop

The highlight of the Taste Tibet travelling roadshow is surely the annual curry and quiz night at our children’s school. How better to celebrate the

Yeshi had been living outside of Tibet for over a decade when our paths crossed on a mountain road in northern India 2009. He’d landed

It’s surprising how much Yeshi enjoys The Traitors when you understand that cynicism, posturing and backhanded behaviour are actually quite alien to him. Yeshi would

Yeshi’s mother died last Thursday evening in Tibet. He was at the restaurant and received the news from a cousin in India, rather than from

We’re hoping to go back to Tibet again this year. We made the trek to central London last week to hand our passports in to

Happy new year, everyone! Taste Tibet is reopening TODAY, Wednesday, after a short Christmas break. Hopefully you have missed us a lot and will come

We overindulged on Saturday night. Our neighbourhood bookshop, the fabulous Caper, had a Christmas party in their back room, a space that you actually access

Why is it that there are so few Tibetan restaurants? In the UK you can count them on just the one hand. In part it’s

Christmas is not a traditional Tibetan holiday. Yeshi’s family have never heard of it, and Yeshi himself still needs convincing. For most restaurants, everything kicks

We spend a lot of time celebrating the positives of village life in Tibet. In Yeshi’s home, four generations live together and provide for one

Did you catch our poster boy posing outside Taste Tibet on Saturday? I confess that we only bought those ⓹ balloons because we found out

Sometimes we get so stuck in the day-to-day that we can forget where we’ve come from. The journalist Etain O’Carroll may be right in saying

Oxford can feel small sometimes – this was one of those weeks. Our friends (they’re Chinese and French) got married at the Hackney Town Hall

It’s half term, but there will be no slacking in the Taste Tibet home. For Yeshi, holiday time presents a rare opportunity to teach the

Those of you who’ve been following us for a while know that we’re not too shy in coming forwards. We’ve always got lots to say,

When I was growing up in the 1970s my mum didn’t speak to me in French, her language of origin. She’d had a bit of

Would you work with your significant other? For Yeshi, our working relationship is a perfectly normal arrangement: not working to support each other as a

The lights flickered a few times at the restaurant at the weekend. Our till system went down momentarily. An alarm at a nearby property punctured

We live and work in a small half square mile. To one side of us is the restaurant. To the other, Aston’s Eyot, a 32-acre

Yeshi told me not to write about Pema’s reunion this week with her family, 14 months after she left her home in India to come

Thank you to everyone in Oxford who has waited for us to reopen after our summer of festivals. Unbelievably, the restaurant has been closed since

Hello! It’s been a long summer away from our desks, but reader we have not been slacking! Tibetans are a nomadic people, and we spend

The weekly posts have dropped off since we closed the doors to the restaurant in mid-May. Don’t worry – a summer hiatus is just what

Marks and Spencer (or Marks Expensive as Yeshi likes to call it) does very well out of our trips back to Tibet. Yeshi empties the

Everyone is happy that the doors to Taste Tibet are open again. The momos have been flying out. Yeshi is definitely home from Tibet, and

In many ways Yeshi is more British than I am. He’s certainly more obsessed with the weather. To some extent this is because weather matters

The children often say that we talk about Taste Tibet as if it’s a massively failing business. It’s true that we have a habit of

During the years that I was living in China there were certain British staples I would always stash into my bags on visits home. Top

Sun is shining and everyone is crawling out of the shadows. We had a packed house last weekend that spilled out into the restaurant’s large

When there’s a big decision to make in our family or business life, Yeshi often suggests that we seek divination. In Tibet, divination systems have

I was six months pregnant when Yeshi first arrived in the UK. The two of us, together with my big bump, holed up in a

What a state we’re in. Addressing the current global situation is a longer post (and we’re not the people to write it), but in a

“Too fast”. The constant refrain of the Beijing taxi driver when you got to talking about the pace of change in China, a topic you’d

This week we are mostly devouring An A-Z of Chinese Food (Recipes Not Included), Jenny Lau’s brilliant new anthology in which she explores identity, race,

We have a teen and a tweenager in the house now. They’re big fans of dad’s chicken curry, and of course all the momos. Back

Years ago I had a Chinese boyfriend (sorry Yeshi). The relationship – which was mercifully brief – ended when I found him in bed with

The restaurant reopens this week and it’s looking like there will be plenty of sunshine. For Yeshi, this is an auspicious start to the year.

This is our final Postcard From Tibet for 2024. The restaurant will be open right through until Sunday evening this week (reopening January 8th), but

One wonderful outcome of the growth of our momo empire has been the evolution of a team of amazing momo-makers, who – like Yeshi –