For a place that is on the bucket lists of so many travellers, Ladakh used to be strangely lacking in restaurants that specialise in Ladakhi cuisine. But a small 40-seater café with an open kitchen in Alchi–known for its ancient Alchi Monastery that is located roughly 65 kilometres from Leh city–is changing that.
When 43-year-old Nilza Wangmo started Alchi Kitchen, there was a lot of scepticism about a café that would serve Ladakhi food. “Even my relatives felt that tourists would not eat Ladakhi food,” says Wangmo. “Ladakhi society is agrarian in nature so they tend to be self-contained. Tibetans, by way of being refugees, had to be more resourceful, which is why one would see more momos and thukpas in Leh,” explains Pankaj Sharma, head chef of Syah, a farm-to-table restaurant in Ladakh Sarai.
But Wangmo was firm. During her days working as a tour operator and running a camp stall in Kargil, she had found a few tourists who were curious about Ladakhi food. “There was no restaurant serving the kind of food we eat at home. Meanwhile, at restaurants, the culture was to hire people from outside,” she says.
When everything was washed away in a flash flood in 2010, Wangmo and her mother Tsering dreamed of opening a cooking school. The idea of a restaurant that would serve only Ladakhi food was too outlandish but the thought of a cooking school was not. Unfortunately, when it came down to finances, it was easier to open a homestay than a cooking school and that is what they decided to do. Pivoting a full circle, they eventually turned it into a restaurant. “I learnt cooking from my mother and grandmother and we wanted to pass that on,” says Wangmo.
Now, according to Wangmo, while the older Ladakhis are less sceptical, the younger generation has embraced their identity and food. A few more unique dining experiences in Leh town have cropped up, including Syah, and some Ladakhi dishes such as Skew are available even in run-of-the-mill Chinese Asian restaurants.
Perhaps it is her first-mover advantage that got Wangmo here. Or her belief in training local women instead of hiring chefs and staff from outside. It was her endeavour to provide employment to girls from the village that got her noticed by the powers that be, and won her the Nari Shakti award from the Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2020. Before the pandemic struck, Wangmo was employing nearly 20 girls from the village but had to cut back later. “She is such a force to be reckoned with–not just because she was the first to start a Ladakhi restaurant but also because of how she changes her horizons every year,” says Sharma, whose own impressive resumé includes working with the Oberoi Group of Hotels and The Lodhi in New Delhi.
A popular travel magazine has christened Wangmo thaap (as the ‘hearth’ is known in Ladakh), that is,“a place of worship”. This may explain why the celestials of the silver screen keep dropping into her restaurant. TV-star-turned-politician Smriti Irani may have handed her the award but Wangmo’s popularity only seems to be increasing. From Kunal Kemmu pulling a goofy face at a plate of Ladakhi sweet dish called paktsa markhu to Kriti Sanon posing against her sunny verandah table to Nandita Das and Manoj Bajpayee smiling warmly at her camera, they all seem to drop in at Alchi Kitchen and are happy to be photographed and praise the food.
Wangmo’s Instagram presence with about 2000 followers might not mean much to today’s influencers but it is interesting to see who’s watching. Her followers include chef Thomas Zacharias, Dehradun-based food consultant Sangeeta Khanna and author and food consultant Saee Koranne-Khandekar. It may be because her Instagram is a repository of Ladakhi food and techniques or because it hits the sweet spot between being artfully plated and yet looking hearty and nourishing.
“SHE IS SUCH A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH–NOT JUST BECAUSE SHE WAS THE FIRST TO START A LADAKHI RESTAURANT BUT ALSO BECAUSE OF HOW SHE CHANGES HER HORIZONS EVERY YEAR"Pankaj Sharma
Making the food more interesting are Wangmo’s slice-of-life posts that show off what is growing in her kitchen garden. Photographs of saplings with zucchini, spinach, turnips or apple blossoms in bloom are accompanied by the caption: “Farming is my second passion,” hashtags in place. Another post shows her picking apples–pink and glossy. The harsh sunlight of Ladakh might have overexposed the photo but not the spirit of her venture.
Farm-to-table and seasonal menus are fashionable concepts now but Wangmo has been doing this at Alchi Kitchen for a long time, more out of necessity than out of a need to keep up with changing trends. She uses the rocket and collard greens grown in her kitchen backyard and apricots and sundried tomatoes from nearby farms. Meat- or vegetable-stuffed fermented khambir–a pita-like bread–is another dish that is perfect when washed down with tea or fresh apricot juice.
Apricots grow so readily in Ladakh that they are present nearly in every form in most of Wangmo’s dishes—apricot seeds are used instead of almond or almond meal; apricot blossoms in cakes or salads; apricot oil for cooking; and apricot juice and hot-off-the-oven cookies served with sunny and resplendent apricot jam.
Even her “pastas” are freshly made in the morning every day. “It is not something that refrigerates well,” she explains. “Pasta?” we ask. “Yes, we use flour and water to make Ladakhi pasta that is like chutagi–these are our dishes that came from Central Asia,” she adds. Another pasta-like dish is skew, which comprises tiny, orecchiette-shaped pasta cooked in a rich, unctuous, meaty stew. Mok mok–the Ladakhi variant of momos that tend to have slightly thicker skin–are ubiquitous in the hills but like everything else, is made fresh in her thaap. To sip on hot, salty, fatty hug-in-a-mug gur gur cha while the pressure cooker whistles incessantly, filling the kitchen with the aroma of a meaty broth, is a kind of warmth that is not easily found in plush restaurants.
Meanwhile, Wangmo’s dream of establishing a cooking school is near completion. The homestay she plans on opening is under construction. “Only guests who are interested in our food and wanting to learn how to cook our food will be allowed to stay here,” she signs off.