Tusa Dining Re-Imagines Nepali Food

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In a recent Kathmandu Post profile, Mokshyada Thapa visits Tusa Dining, a Bhaktapur restaurant trying to rethink what Nepali food can be. Its three founders, Parashuram Pathak, Sagar Shrestha, and Rupesh Bohara, trained as chefs abroad and came home to open Tusa in 2024. The name means “sprouts,” a nod to new beginnings.

The idea grew out of a gap they kept noticing. As Bohara tells Thapa, the three could discuss French cooking with ease, yet they struggled to name their own country’s dishes beyond the usual few. Tusa is their answer. He describes the result as a modern, progressive take on Nepali cooking, though the founders are careful not to call it fine dining. Having seen what that means elsewhere, they feel Nepal’s culinary scene is still early in that journey.

The restaurant sits inside a heritage building in Bhaktapur, built by Rabindra Puri, a conservationist and UNESCO prize winner. The architecture was meant to match the food. At its center is an open kitchen. “To cook in this open area is to perform as a chef,” Bohara says, treating the kitchen as both stage and workspace. A small pavilion holds cookbooks signed by the chefs who wrote them, and the reading nook is open to hospitality and culinary students.

The menu shifts with the seasons, changing about four times a year. Each dish keeps a Nepali core while reworking the technique and presentation. A few examples:

  • Sisno cake. Nettle, or sisno, is usually cooked into a soup eaten with rice. Tusa turns the nutritious plant into a dessert.
  • Chyakhla with chicken. This grain porridge, similar to grits and usually made from corn, is rebuilt around chicken.
  • Laligurans sorbet. The rhododendron, Nepal’s national flower, becomes a dairy-free frozen dessert that marks the short season when the blooms cover the hills.

Much of the work happens before the cooking. The founders travel to villages to gather ingredients and the stories behind them. On a trip to Dolpa, Thapa reports, their welcome drink was saffron tea. They have collected food traditions from Jiri, Jhapa, Illam, and Sankhuwasabha, often learning from village mothers and homestay kitchens. Sourcing is the hard part. Rare local ingredients like sea buckthorn are prized in Michelin-star kitchens abroad, but mass extraction makes them hard to find in nearby markets. At the table, the chefs introduce each course, so diners learn the history behind it. Tusa has hosted guests from Sadhguru to the Duke of Edinburgh, and Bohara notes a growing Nepali audience.

The restaurant is now taking Nepali cuisine abroad. Its website lists a Tusa Canberra branch, now open in the Barton area of Australia’s capital, billed as a new chapter built on the same approach.

AI Assistance: This summary was generated using AI writing tools as part of my AI Explorations process. For more, see the original article linked above.

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