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. Nobody deals well with the half-light of British winter, but I wonder if Tibetans suffer some of the worst.
Our chef Santos, who’s from East Timor, enjoys the cold as something of a novelty, but our Tibetan chefs struggle with English winter big time. In Tibet this season can be frigid, but only at night when the sun goes down. At high altitude Tibetan people enjoy delicious proximity to the warm sun, and it’s always sunny, so the daytimes can be hot enough for shirtsleeves and sunburn.
I have a strong image in my mind of Tibetan men and women dancing outdoors in their fineries during Losar. The Tibetan New Year happens in January/February time, the coldest months of the year, but there’s not a coat or jacket in sight, not even a sweater.
When I first met Yeshi in India, where he’d been living for exactly a decade, he had very little contact with relatives in Tibet (he had none at all for the first eight years). His only window into life back home was the annual Losar DVD that – if you were lucky – would make its way out of the village, be burnt a couple of dozen times, and eventually reach estranged members of the family many months later in India.
Yeshi used to have these DVDs playing all the time in his small dark room in Dharamsala, where we met. Soon enough I became familiar with the music, movements and colour of the gorshey (traditional circle dance), that takes places in the village every year. The dancers are dressed in pink, blue, turquoise, green – long shirtsleeves of all colours that stand out against a backdrop of snow-white houses and a bright blue sky.
This is a very long, roundabout way of saying that winter looks different over here and it can be hard for our Tibetan team to bear, but when the sunny days do come around they sure know how to make the most of them.
At the weekend we took ourselves on a massive walk all around the city of Oxford (pit stop pictured). We have really enjoyed our time off but we’re looking forward to reopening the doors to the restaurant in the sunshine this Wednesday. Please join us! Our opening hours are 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 take-away, dine-in or you can order home delivery through Deliveroo.
Our freezers are also packed with all the nutritious meals you don’t have time to make yourselves, and we have a few jars of chilli oil (fastest fingers first) for those who quaffed it all over Christmas + about the same number of hot mooli pickle. You can stop by for cookbooks as well, or head to the website for online orders.
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 – buy one get one half price on a range of curries and stir-fries. Subscribe to our weekly Substack to receive all the deals straight into your inbox.
Wishing everyone a very happy new year and we look 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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