Extreme Food: Try These Authentic Foods Next Time You’re In Ladakh

But a change is afoot. In the last decade, Ladakhi cooks have begun to celebrate their diverse and delicious cuisine. They’re fighting the misconception: Meat dumplings aren’t momos, they’re mokmok. Local pasta and khambir (a sourdough bread) are being given more importance than the usual European claptrap. Time-consuming old recipes are the main attraction at the pop-up. Even vegetarian dishes are being included in the restaurant menu. No one expects this dish to reach the national level. But each new experiment is its own little revolution. And reinventing #LadkhVibes. To keep an eye.

walking the silk road

Padma Yangchan and Jigmet Disket founded Namja Dining in Leh in 2017, hoping that tourists visiting the cold capital would want to sample more than just the landscape. Much of their menu consisted of home-style preparations that fell out of favor because they took too much time and labor, and food even Ladakhis did not eat often because they were expensive to make. Now, locals and tourists come for the gyuma (delicious handmade mutton sausages commonly eaten at feasts) and morel dumplings. They enjoy kabra, wild caper shoots in April and May. “It is very bitter, so traditionally it is boiled for a period of time, or left under running spring water for a few days to remove the bitterness,” says Disket.

The menu reflects the aspirations of the region as well as its traditions. She says, “In extreme cold we needed nutrition, so we ate soupy, simple meals. Extravagance was only for special occasions and rich households.” So, while simple staples like barley appear in desserts, there’s also Yarkhandi pulao, which is slow-cooked for six hours and flavored with cumin, black cardamom and cloves – spices that traded along the Silk Route and likely passed through the Chinese province that gives this dish its name.

The restaurant’s chutgi, a pasta dish, is served as a trotter stew or with sun-dried vegetables. Both reflect the difficult mountain life, where vegetables were not available throughout the year and everyday meals required ingenuity. “Back when we were completely cut off, we ate whatever we had. Most families had livestock. You never wasted any of it.”

In August, Namza hosted a pop-up in Gurugram, which was attended by 180 people over two days. “Many people are hesitant to go to Ladakh because of the altitude, but they are keen to try the food there,” says Disket. The dream is to open a Ladakhi restaurant in Delhi. “People think food is limited, but we need more storytelling to change this perception.”

garden of earthly delights

Jigmet Mingyur’s approach to food is unusual. He became a monk at the age of nine and spent 14 years in a monastery in Nepal, doing everything from plumbing to cleaning as part of his duties. But when the 2015 earthquake hit and he started cooking during relief efforts, it gave him a different kind of purpose.

He left the monastic life shortly afterwards, and worked in Goa from washing utensils to waiting tables, and earlier this year returned to Ladakh to establish Tsamkhang. The al fresco farm-to-table dining experience at Horji, a 15-minute drive from Leh, serves home-style food, the way even locals have stopped cooking.

“I wanted a place where I could grow my own vegetables and tell the story of our land, ingredients and traditions,” says Mingur. So, the menu has unusual offerings like pollda (roasted, ready-to-eat, barley flour), moscot – (buckwheat pancake with walnut sauce), and nyamathuk (roasted barley flour soup).

He says that since tourists are coming from India and abroad, there is a new enthusiasm for the cuisine. “Before Covid, domestic tourists mainly wanted North Indian food. Now, along with the landscape, they are also interested in what we eat.” But it is difficult to take the dishes out of your hill house. Wild herbs and produce are difficult to find outside Ladakh, and the subtle flavors of the food can be lost on the spice-loving palates of the rest of India.

“Ladakhi cuisine doesn’t have enough ambassadors,” says Mingyur. “That’s good news.” This means, like in the mountains, the only way to go is up.

History, hand cooked

Nilja Wangmo grew up in a household that had 15 to 20 members and a kitchen full of food. So, it is not surprising that in 2016, he and his mother Tsering Angmo opened Alchi Kitchen in Alchi village, 70 kilometers from Leh. “The idea was to showcase the food I grew up eating,” Wangmo says. “My mother thought of expanding it into a cookery school, where guests could cook and taste Ladakhi dishes.”

The women showcase the kind of dishes that commercial restaurants shy away from. Timsthuk, a type of thukpa, consists of brown peas, local cheese and hand-rolled noodles. Wangmo says, “Some young people can roll noodles thinly in one go. Fortunately, I learned this from my mother and grandmother.” There are vegetable stews, apricot-based dishes and thangatoor (curd or buttermilk with herbs). Regional variations are also visible. “Here in Sham Valley, we use buttermilk or leftover chang to ferment khambir (yeast bread), which gives it a dark brown color.”

Wangmo also does trendy variations: chocolate mokmok and pita-style stuffed khambir. But broadly speaking, the dishes remain consistent with the region. They are not spicy the way restaurant versions often are. She says, it works. Pride in Ladakhi identity and traditions is growing, and “visitors arrive with more curiosity and awareness than before”.

In pop-ups in Mumbai, Uttarakhand and other parts of India, Wangmo finds that diners are surprised by how diverse the cuisine can be. And they want to hear more about food. “My storytelling skills have improved over time,” she admits. “The challenge is to convey the simplicity of the food. Barley may seem prosaic, but when you talk about the history and its nutritional role for us, it takes on another dimension, rooted in this land and its people.”

To change position

The longest lunch organized by Kunjes Angmo lasted six hours. “I had to remind my guests that I also have to go home,” she says. Through her initiative, Artisanal Alchemy, Angmo arranges multi-course meals at Stok Palace and Jade House in Leh, in which she explains Ladakh’s food heritage, preservation practices and the purpose of each ingredient in a dish. Guests guide the pace of the meal with their questions, and the initiative aims to fill the gaps in what the world knows about Ladakh and its food.

Angmo serves no momos, no Tibetan standards. And yet, lunch is in high demand. Only 60 tables are open each year, and Angmo works with experiential travel companies to ensure that only truly keen foodies can secure a booking.

Courses include indigenous ingredients such as tramneung (rutabagas), gyalabuk (Chinese radish), chintse (Chinese celery), osu (local cilantro) and scotse (wild onion chives). “There is no turmeric or red chili powder,” she says. But the legacy of the Silk Route is visible in the use of black pepper. Mokmok are filled with red meat, not chicken, as poultry was never part of the traditional diet. And she also highlights baking traditions influenced by Central Asia – breads and biscuits baked in closed pans over embers of dried leaves.

After sampling the pickles and alcohol, guests come away with a new understanding of fermentation. And yet, Angmo says, his people’s recipes are unlikely to go viral. “We are very few people. We travel, study, or work outside Ladakh, but most of us return because of the excellent quality of life. We were never displaced, so our food did not come out like Tibetans or Punjabis. The onus is on us to present Ladakhi cuisine well.”

From HT Brunch, October 11, 2025

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