Bhutan Tales - 3 - Food

It was rice... rice..and  rice for all the days I stayed in Bhutan. Look at my couple of meals..

Low calories food...Ema Datshi is next to noodles

 First day wanted to try authentic Bhutanese meal. So I went to a restaurant called  Authentic Bhutanese restaurant. They served -  sea weed soup, rice, black wheat noodles, spinach , potato fry and Ema datshi.  Except Ema datshi  ( very spicy) nothing was tasty.   Ema datshi ( chilli cheese)is kind of their national food. They make potato datshi, mixed vegetable datshi and mushroom datshi.  I was served with thick one as well as thin one. I was told that  authentic datshi is prepared using yak cheese.

Yak Cheese from market

But in hotels they use any other cheese from super market. Their market is dominated by chilli. Chilli is a main vegetable for them.  During my Sunday vegetable market walk saw everybody carrying atleast a kg of chilli in their hands.

Chilli chilli everywhere !!!..

Next day similar meals but they were tasty and price was less than the first one.Typically in all the buffet they have one non veg item. Rest all are  couple of vegetables with rice. Being a vegetarian I was not finding protein source in any of my meals. When lentil soup was served in couple of dinners I was very happy to get protein intake.

I didn’t see dessert being part of their meals. Everywhere I was asking for desert but was told  NO. I was wondering what do they serve if they have guests. Lal ( My guide for 2 days) told me that they serve same  food. Though I found couple of sweet and snacks shop, it was all from India. Didn’t find anything as Bhutanese sweets. 

Curd is something absolutely missing  in their food. In fact, it wasn’t available in menu even in Indian restaurants.  I had good curd rice the moment I reached home :-) My craving taste buds were fully satisfied :-)

Most of the Bhutanese eat non veg. But here is a tricky point. They want to eat. But don’t want slaughtering. So, they import  meat  from India. In a way import of  non  violence .... :-) :-)

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