Trouble is, the internet seems to be in the process of severing diplomatic relations with Nepal. I think the combination of pirated software and seat-of-the-raggedy-pants network admin is taking its toll.

So it might be that this thing will be quiet for a little bit. Or at least quieter than we’d like.

Ringmo Restaurant, one of Kathmandu’s very first restaurants (36 years old, according to Dil, a co-owner), is right up the street from us.

They’re serving the food we’ve been looking for. The menu is humble and 100% homemade, as far as I can tell.

So far we’ve eaten the best hot-and-sour soup either of us has ever had; a tremendous chow mein of house-made soft noodles and chicken and crisp veggies; chicken curry (ridiculously yummy and substantial without being thick or heavy); stir fried vegetables and paneer (a kind of south Asian cheese that’s like flavorful mozzerella but a little more dry, with a texture akin to firm tofu), which is the best I’ve ever tasted.

In this latter dish, the cheese and the veggies are all marinated and then stir-fried very hot it seems, so that there’s a browning n the edges. The sauce is uncomplicated but delicate–befitting food made by men who walk slowly to and from a kitchen where they’ve cooked for dozens of years.

The grub here is as unpretentious as the setting–there is no celebration on the menu of the facts that the noodles are made in-house, that the eggs are farm fresh, that the chicken was walking around that morning, or that the food is any damn good at all, for that matter. These are simply the facts of running a business here.

The menu itself is a photocopied sheet tucked into a grubby three-ring clear vinyl sheet protector. Nary a gold tassle in sight.

The prices of food here are something around half what we’d been paying for the tourist food I was whining about before. The portions are reasonable-sized, and there is absolutely no pressure to buy desserts or get tall drinks with silly straws in them (not that the Ringmo folks could lay their hands on these things if we ordered them!).

Amy and I both tend to be pretty enthusiastic when we’re served food we like, and I think it’s probably pretty funny for the guys at Ringmo–seeing us all like, “This is the Best Hot And Sour Soup EVER!”, and telling them so.

It’s the charm of the rustic kitchen–what city people all over get all exercised about: Kind people making simple food with care. It’s going to be good, even if you get chuckled at for noticing.

At this point, we’ve been there three times in two days (to be fair, we are stuck eating two meals a day at restaurants, so it’s not as excessive as it seems), and we couldn’t be happier. More on this wonderful place later, I’m guessing.

Mango Slice: Juice and soda in a nifty bottle. Mmm.

On a minor note of inconvenience, we are having a tough time finding good food, cheap. Kitchens/restaurants in these parts seem either to be of the supremely grubby, guaranteed-to-make-you-sick kind, or of the backpackers’-delight-rich-and-fatty-comfort-food-and-a-little-too-expensive-to-boot variety. 

We’ve got a modest budget for our daily consumables, and our hotel provides a great breakfast spread. Lunch and dinner are putting us near our wits’ end. We just want to find clean, cheap local food–Nepali or South Asian (aka ‘Indian’) is fine. 

We’ve been trying restaurants around, and while they’re uniformly decent and occasionally outright grubbin’, we’re spending on average eight-ten bucks for a meal for two.

Cheap, to be sure, but not quite cheap enough to keep us in budget, plus we don’t need all the french fries and stuff they love to feed tourists, particularly given we are pretty much off salads (leafy foods being the worst offenders for foodborne yuckiness).

We seek humble, local grub. Steamed greens, rice, a little chicken. Some eggs maybe. Nice soups. All of these we know are served here; none that we’ve been able to find in restaurants. We expect once we find the key, we’ll be eating well for five or six bucks a day for the two of us. We want to let that LSF money go to educate little girls, not feed us Chicken Sizzlers at Helena’s!

(And don’t even get me started on the weather! Turns out it’s hot here in summer. Who knew??)