Daili Mamma's Tibetan Restaurant

Daili Mamma's serves an appealingly spiced mix of traditional stews, Tibetan pastas and breads, and momos, described as the national dish. Resembling Chinese steamed buns, these dumplings—filled with vegetables, basil-spiked beef, or chicken—spring to life with a dab of soy sauce.

Order the dinner special; it includes a cup of good soup and a sprightly little salad of carrots, herbs, and canned beans awakened with a squeeze of lemon.

Tibetan cuisine comes across as a cross between Chinese and Indian, but ingredients such as emma (a smoky Tibetan pepper) remind you of the divides between the three.

Order the family meal; each family member selects from each of the following six groups:

Butter tea.

Cold dishes: yak stomach, air-dried beef, mutton sausage, blood sausage, Xigatse starch sheet, curd, curd pastry.

Hot dishes: stir fried sheep lung, beef stew with turnip, ox-foot stew Han-style, steam wild duck with insect-plant, beef and potato with curry sauce. finger mutton, braised ox tender, boiled mushroom.

Staple: rice with butter, flour lump with butter and curd, tsamba cake with curd, beef dumpling, curd pastry, mou-mou (steam bread, a Norther Chinese food).

Beverage: barley beer, beer, Tibetan vodka, mineral water, soda.

After dinner drink: simple tea, milk tea, butter tea.