Food at Everest Cafe Scores High

As I was beginning this post, I kept trying to think of a headline using the restaurant's name  in a clever way but couldn't come up with any good enough to use. You know, like "Everest is the peak of Nepalese cuisine" or "You don't have to climb a mountain to get good food at Everest."

Lucky for all of you, I settled for a boring title rather than one that would make you groan out loud.

Let me take just a momentary side trip to say how nice it is when George lunches with Dave and me. Not only do we get to try more dishes that way, but we have someone else to talk to. Now I adore my husband, and we are perfect for each other. But after working together all week and eating almost every meal together, another person with experiences outside our house/office is a welcome addition to the conversation. Besides George knows more about food than I do, so he's well suited to accompany us on this lunching journey.

But on to the food! I started with a nice hot Nepali chai. I couldn't tell how it was inherently different from a non-Nepali chai, but it was especially good. George perused the wine menu and had a glass of chenin blanc from Sula Vinyard, which he recognized as an Indian wine that he'd had before and really liked. (I myself have never had a wine from India, but my sense is that India is known more for its samosas than its wine.) Dave just had water until he tasted my chai, and then he ordered a chai of his own.

The lunch menu had specials that included papadam, naan, the obligatory salad, raita, basmati rice, a soup, and a cold potato cucumber dish—all for $8.99. The cold dish probably isn't something I would order on its own, but it was fine as accompaniment. The obligatory mini-salad was edible but not exciting. (At least it didn't suffer from Thousand Island dressing or some awful equivalent.) Everything else was great.

I ordered a pumpkin garbanzo dish that was spicy and delicious. (See photo.) George got the goat curry and pronounced it "really good." Dave also enjoyed his noodle dish a lot, which had all kinds of stuff going on, and the broth was quite flavorful.

The only oddity was my plate, which looked like it was stolen from a prison, or at the very least, a cut-rate summer camp. I imagine an uprising at a penitentiary where the inmates have flung their food off their metal plates and have started bashing them against the prison bars, inciting a riot of major proportions. "ATTICA! ATTICA!" or maybe more along the lines of "NO MORE THOUSAND ISLAND DRESSING!" At least that's what I would be protesting. But I'm sure they are economical to use, since one of these divided plates holds six different food items without having to worry that the raita and the soup will flood the rice, and the dishwasher has way fewer dishes.

The bathroom was tiny but clean. When I was in it, I thought I was overhearing someone on the restaurant staff talking on a phone just off the kitchen, but when I opened the door to return to my table, I realized that the voice I heard must have been coming through an air duct from whatever is behind (or above?) Everest. Now there's a mystery for someone out there to solve...

The service was good. (I never had to call over our waitress to get refills on water.) The food was very good. And the prices were reasonable. (Especially since I had purchased a Groupon, which allowed me to order $22 worth of food for only $11.) I give Everest Café a hearty thumbs up!