Fire in the mountains

In cold, cold Ladakh, a revolution is brewing. Restaurants are moving past touristy dumplings and stew, to serve authentic homestyle fare. Get set for interactive lunches, hand-rolled noodles, local sourdough and a taste of community. Julley!

- Reem Khokhar

For most travellers #LadakhVibes largely means saluting the stereotypes: Dramatic mountainscapes, bucket-lists with the motorcycle, hiking flexes, making it to Pangong lake after watching 3 Idiots in 2009. This includes food too: thukpa, momos, yak cheese. So, local restaurants rarely serve more than this trifecta.

But a shift is underway. Over the past decade, Ladakhi chefs have begun celebrating their varied and storied cuisine. They're fighting misconception: The meat dumplings are not momos, they're mokmoks. Local pastas and khambir (a sourdough flatbread) are being championed over generic European claptrap. Time-consuming old recipes are the star attraction at popups. No one expects the cuisine to go national. But each new experiment is its own little revolution. And a reinvention of #LadakhVibes. Take a look didn’t eat often because they were expensive to make. Now, locals and tourists drop in for the gyuma (indulgent handmade mutton sausages typically eaten at feasts) and the morel dumplings. They relish kabra, wild caper shoots foraged in April and May. “It’s very bitter, so it is traditionally boiled for some time, or left under running spring water for a few days to wash away the bitterness,” says Disket.

The menu reflects the region’s aspirations as much as its traditions. “We need nourishment in the extreme cold, so we had soupy, simple food. Extravagance was only for special occasions and for wealthier households,” she says. So, while simpler staples such as barley appear in desserts, there's also Yarkhandi pulao, which is slow-cooked for six hours and is flavoured with caraway, black cardamom and cloves - spices that were traded along the Silk Route and possibly passed though the Chinese province that gives the dish its name.