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With only one night in Chicago, and a rainy one at that, I hopped into a taxi to the neighborhood of Logan Square to enjoy dinner and drinks at Chiya Chai, recently named Best Indian Restaurant in Chicago by Chicago Reader. A fan of Indian food, I was looking forward to a comfort meal and got so much more. Chiya Chai is owned by brothers Swadesh and Saujanya Shrestha who grew up in the midst of the world of tea in Kathmandu, Nepal. Their family are Nepalese tea farmers and their father was one of the first exporters of Nepalese tea to the United States. Swadesh Shrestha recalled growing up in the foothills of the Nepalese Himalayas and loved going to his grandfather's tea shop where he would sit quietly sipping a cup of milky chai as he watched the comings and goings of the village. The brothers, along with Swadesh's wife Rajee, who is also from Kathmandu, opened a restaurant in Minneapolis and ten years later, in August of 2016, opened Chiya Chai in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago.  
21 November, 2017
Venice Blvd. in Culver City is lined with ethnic restaurants. Every time I drive down Venice, trying to avoid the congestion on parallel streets, I look at the restaurants as I drive by, and wonder how to chose one to try. So recently, I checked out Tara's Himalayan Cuisine, serving Nepalese and Tibetan cuisine.  Behind the vine covered fence, you enter a space with a tarp covered ceiling, that has lighting coming from behind it. While the decor and ambience are nothing special, Tara's serves authentic Himalyan cuisine from Nepal and Tibet and 10% of any profit earned goes toward education in Nepal. It's a nice idea knowing that we can go out to eat and some of the money we spend will impact the life of women and children in Nepal.
23 April, 2014
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