Tibetan Food is not Gourmet

Before I moved to Lhasa back in 2006, I don't even recall how many people told me time and time again that the food there stinks, that I would be hungry all the time because the food was terrible and Tibetan food was pretty much the worst of the if, next to the Chinese, Muslim and even the meager Western offerings.

I respectfully beg to differ with all of those people. Tibetan food is designed to be the foundation of life, as all food originally and at it's base, truly is. Over time, here in the "civilized" Western world, food has become luxury, trendy. According to the International Food Distributors Association, restaurants and associated businesses were a $600 billion industry in 2011. I can only imagine it has grown. In Tibet, while there are no calculated numbers, as such, I can guarantee it is less than that....much less.

Food in Tibet is not about sophistication, unless you take sophistication and simplicity hand in hand. When you live at an altitude of 12000 ft or greater, with minimal resources at your disposal, minimal processed items, and limited cooking methods, you learn to add variety where you can, and love the staples you have in abundance. It is amazing how much pleasure can be derived from simple things.

Living in Lhasa, I don't recall ever having a particularly bad meal. There were places that were better than others, sure, but overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the food. Variety is the spice of life, they say and variety, there certainly was. Any given day, I chose between a traditional Tibetan restaurant, Indian, Nepali, Chinese, Korean, Muslim, or Western. There were regional Tibetan restaurants, many, many types of momos (dumplings), thukpas (noodle soups), a wide variety of foods on sticks, in little baggies. There was an endless array of delicious things to be found, if one was willing to step outside the Western fast food box.

The difference, though, is that Tibetan food has not changed itself so much from it's purely survival based foundation, that it must be deconstructed, reconstructed, or have its own philosophy. It simply is.