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 the Chinese Visa Centre. And so begins a process that can be testing and lengthy: in the past it’s taken us over six months to get our applications approved. Access to Tibet is restricted for all foreign passport-holders. (As for Yeshi, growing up in Tibet he never had a passport, but even if he did, China does not recognise dual citizenship).
In the meantime, we enjoy the company of the small group of Tibetans that we’ve assembled over the Taste Tibet years here in east Oxford. These are your momo makers and their family members. We hang out. We get on. Life is good.
But we’re just a tiny group. Around the corner from the restaurant, a few steps from our own home, is a thriving coffee shop run by a Greek businessman of Albanian descent. During the daytime, the cafe bustles with what feels like half of Oxford’s Greek/Albanian community.
Imagine having that. It would bring custom, of course, but to fill the room with your own people brings something more valuable still: energy and ideas that feed back into the space and give it meaning and feeling, to outsiders as well.
The UK’s Tibetan community is so small that there’s nowhere this kind of thing can happen organically. Yeshi’s brother Nyima works alongside us in Oxford now, but I always remember visiting him in New York years ago before he made the move. There was an area near his apartment in Queens where dozens of Tibetan eateries stood side by side. Coming from Oxford, it was a shock to rub shoulders with Tibetans so plentiful in number that they were strangers not merely to us but also to one another.
Oxford is home to very few Tibetans, but even in cities like London or Bristol where communities are better formed we’d still struggle to fill tables with our own. There’s a Welsh word that describes well the sense of incompleteness that we’re left with. Hiraeth is the feeling of missing something you’ve never had, homesickness for a place you’ve never visited. This yearning is more than familiar to many Tibetan people across the world, especially those born outside of their homeland.
The restaurant is open all the usual hours this week, as follows:
Weds – Fri: 5-9.30pm (dinner only)
Saturday: 12-3/ 5-9.30pm
Sunday: 12-3 / 5-9pm
This week’s menu is up on the website – check it. Come by for dine in, take away and a restock of our freezers. We also have shelves full of cookbooks, chilli oil and hot mooli pickle.
Newsletter subscribers always enjoy deals and offers on food at our restaurant. This week we’re running a sale on some of your favourite dishes from our freezers. Click here so sign up.
Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Julie and Yeshi
Opening hours this week:
Weds – Fri: 5-9.30pm
Saturday: 12-3pm 🥢 5-9.30pm
Sunday: 12-3pm 🥢 5-9pm
☏ 01865 499318
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