The Cube

Dishes we had in Tibet were hearty and filling. The most affordable ones on the menu were either dishes with rice or noodles. We tried to keep our lunch and dinner budget to CNY 100 for 2 people a day.  I split them into rice, noodles, soup, dumplings, snacks and others as the food were more of less the same in across the restaurants so we ordered different dishes to get some variety. 

Seafood is not eaten in Tibet, and we didn't see anymore chicken dishes in Tibetan restaurants after the Lulang Chicken Stone Pot.

This one is rather popular - potato curry rice bowl.

This is another version of potato and curry rice but we didn't expect this one to be soupy when ordered.

We did a takeaway dinner from one of the shops nearby in Lhasa and had it back in the hotel.

We also had a few different variations of egg fried rice including one that we carried around after getting a takeaway and decided to wait for sunset in Zanda. By the time we got back to the hotel, we forgot to take a picture. 

According to the guide, ginger could either prevent altitude sickness or alleviate the symptoms. 

This one below was described as land of snow fried rice on the menu. Not sure why but quite tasty.

Most of the dishes with rice were rather generous with gravy. So we were very happy to see plain white rice on the side, not covered under the dishes and not laden with gravy.

This Nepali curry rice was offered in a Tibetan restaurant that we went during lunch. By then we already pretty much tried the dishes on offered as this was at day 15 in Tibet. 

Once we thought ordering just the dish without rice might be a smaller portion as you can see the portion were big. We were wrong. A stir fry dish order just means a whole plate of the dish without rice.

Here are the variations of noodles we had.

The 'skin' or the 'wrapper' for the ones below were more bao bread like. They usually sold it in ten but we bumped into the guide and driver having dinner at the same shop and helped us ordered. We only wanted five because we already had the diced meat soup (picture further below) to share. We only ordered one item because we felt the shop was a little pricey. 

This diced meat soup was probably more like a stew as it is not like a broth type of soup. It was eaten with the bread. 

Diced meat soup

Tomato egg soup

Seaweed egg soup

Vegetable soup

Meat radish soup

Sweet potato cake

The next three were from McDonalds. We shared a chicken wrap with bamboo shoots, mala chicken stripes and matcha molasses mochi pie. 





Others

Chicken stone pot is a specialty of Lulang, so was the only time we saw chicken on the menu in a Tibetan restaurant. We did have fried chicken stripes for snack though. I think this pot, said to be 2 people's portion had a whole chicken in it. We were stuffed. 

Breakfasts were included as part of the tour, lunches and dinners were self-funded. Lunch venues were wherever the driver and guide brought us. They asked what we wanted to eat on day 1 to which we answered Tibetan food. After that, they have always stopped at a Tibetan eatery for lunch except the last day when we were on the way back to Shigatse. It was a Sichuan restaurant midway. We went dinner by ourselves and we always pick a Tibetan eatery. Tibetan food, however, wasn't the highlight of the trip and food on offer were more or less the same. I think Tibetan eateries sell Chinese dishes too.

Most of the accommodations we stayed came with breakfast, except the one in Saga and Darchen. I skipped breakfast in Shigatse, the last day in Tibet because I had an upset stomach starting at 3 am with many toilet runs. Sis, who ate the very same thing as me slept through the night. So I don't know what was it that my stomach didn't agree with. 

The breakfasts we had can kind of split into 3 types - Chinese breakfasts provided by smaller local guesthouses, mixture with non Asian breakfasts in bigger hotels and Tibetan breakfasts. 

The main item was congee and side dishes accompaniment. Of the 3 types of breakfasts, I like this one the least. Guess I am not a fan of the plain diluted congee for breakfast.