Tibet Nepal House

Tibet Nepal House sits at 36 East Holly Street in Old Town Pasadena, a short walk from the Colorado Boulevard tourist strip but quieter than the main mall rush. Proprietor Raj Adhikari, from Nepal, opened the room in 2001 when it was widely described as the first dedicated Himalayan restaurant in the area. The house still sells the same brief: Nepali plates, Tibetan noodles and dumplings, and familiar North Indian curries for mixed tables, in a modest sky-lit space with thangka scrolls and Himalayan crafts on the walls.

Himalayan here is a working label, not a single national cuisine. Nepal and Tibet sit next to northern Indian dishes on one menu, so mustard-oil Nepali stews, momo dumplings, Tibetan thukpa noodle soup, and tandoori chicken can share a table. That is the useful geography. Artesia’s Pioneer corridor covers Gujarati thalis and South Indian dosas; Culver City has Kerala at Mayura; Pasadena is where you go for momo, yak chili when it is in stock, and a Nepali-Tibetan sit-down without driving to West Adams or Culver for Tara’s Himalayan Cuisine.

Two decades on, other Pasadena Himalayan rooms and lunch buffets have opened, and Westside momo counters have multiplied. Tibet Nepal House remains the Old Town default for the longest-running version of that map: casual weeknight curries, a lunch buffet for sampling, and the rare LA chance to order yak when the Colorado shipment is in.

Los Angeles Times Counter Intelligence writer Charles Perry covered the room early (2002) and treated it as a gentle primer on how Nepali and Tibetan cooking differ from standard curry-house Indian. He steered readers to fried momocha dumplings with tomato and cilantro chutneys; khasi ko masu, a slow goat stew with peppers and ginger; stir-fried cabbage (banda gobi) with rye seed; thoubu, transparent noodles with tofu, chile, and Sichuan peppercorn heat; and kheer for dessert. He found the Nepali side more rigorously regional than the Tibetan side, and noted that early Pasadena menus could not yet carry yak.

Later local coverage filled that gap. Time Out’s Clarissa Wei praised star-shaped yak momos with garlic-ginger dipping sauce. LA Weekly’s Jim Thurman called the lunch buffet one of Greater L.A.’s more interesting introductions to Himalayan food, citing tandoori-style Himalayan chicken, vegetable chow mein with a Himalayan spice twist, baingan aloo, daal, and kheer, plus dinner yak momos, yak chili, and yak stew à la carte. The Infatuation still frames the room as Pasadena’s first and best Himalayan stop for casual weeknights: vegetable pakora, curried meats, and a lunch buffet heavy on garlic naan, tandoori chicken, zucchini aloo, and Nepalese curried chow mein.

Public review chatter (Yelp often sits around the mid-4s across a very large sample) repeats momos, thali sets, lamb or chicken sekuwa and biryani, garlic naan, attentive service, and a calm Old Town room that fills by early evening. Friction shows up as dinner meats that can run dry or salty when the kitchen is rushed, buffet or spice inconsistency, and the usual reminder to ask whether yak is actually available that night. Vegetarians and vegan diners frequently say they eat well if they stick to momos, tarkari, saag, and the vegetable buffet lanes.