Yak and Yeti Gurkha Restaurant

I passed this place several weeks ago and the aroma was amazing. So during the most recent visits to York I had earmarked this as a must visit as I hadn’t tried Nepalese cuisine before — but every time I was down the place was closed. Drat. but never mind, plenty of other options locally.
I needed to be in York on Sunday night for an early start and it was opened — Hurrah! You need to be able bodied as the stairs are narrow and quite steep and slightly dingy but I’m here for the grub.
The first thing that struck me was the area set aside for floor level dining — very bo-​ho Ya. A low table with bolsters and scatter cushions was populated with a group of friendly lassies on a birthday dinner and along with the busy main section, helped create a great atmosphere.
I had the Everest Lamb — supposedly slow cooked and ordered the special rice along with a Kukri beer. A papadom with small dish of sauce was proffered while main was prepared. All the dishes were brass and added a nice touch throughout the rest of the meal. The sauce was mild and only mildly tasty due in main to the coriander — with out which it was verging on bland I’m sad to say.
The main was served with very small portions of rice on a flat dish & lamb in a bowl. There was little in the way of sauce — don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t dry but a little more sauce would have mixed well with the rice. The rice was aromatic and included lots of little nice touches like crunchy carrots, prawns and veg. The lamb however was tough and required a good bit of mastication. If I had realised the portions were going to be so small I would have had a starter or extra side but I didn’t want to be too bagged up as it was a relatively late meal. The sauce was nice — fairly mild and tomato /​curry based but not your usual vindaloo — although the birthday group did order fresh scotch bonnet chillies to spice things up a bit and that seemed a great idea.
Price wise main and rice (latter charged separately) was under £15 so not excessive and set meal deals looked good value.
I finished off with a Mustang Coffee — very very small dish of coffee, honey, dash of brandy, roasted rice, and some other ingredients. It would be a great cure for a cold and is reputedly a favourite with trekkers. Nice enough but for less than a shot size — much overpriced at £4 for this nip.
In summary — yes I would return to sample some more as there wasn’t enough negatives to put me off altogether and I need to experience a wider sample. However — the next day, I did suffer from some prolonged bouts of Buddahs Revenge!

Went here for my friends birthday. Great food that is a bit downy to the usual curry or Chinese. Great portion size, you can have a starter, main and fit in a pudding without feeing fast. Really friendly and helpful staff. A great place.

This is now my favourite restaurant in York. Apparently it’s been there for a while! I went to this restaurant for the first time last night with my husband because Gourmet Burger Kitchen was closed. It’s upstairs from CMD on Goodramgate and the doorway is decorated in Nepalese style so you’ll know you’re in the right place. We were seated at a nice table, the ambience is splendid — the music is traditional and there are little paper lanterns and Nepalese style decorations on the walls and ceiling; it’s a very ambient and classy place. The service was fast, very friendly and efficient, and the servers were chatting and having a laugh with customers which made the place seem very friendly. The menu was easy to understand, and there was an excellent selection of vegetarian options, many of which were also vegan as traditional Nepalese food is. The soup starter was fantastic and the main meals were even better — my husband said the lamb was amazing and I can vouch for the vegetables. The lentil dhal was the best I’ve ever had and there was coriander in everything. Just perfect. At the end, the bill was less than I expected — £26 for two people for two courses and non-​alcoholic drinks. The vegetarian options are significantly cheaper than the meat ones which always makes me happy, and best of all, if you get some dhal as well as your vegetable dishes, you can actually get nutritionally balanced food from this restaurant which is almost unheard of for vegetarian food at restaurants (usually at restaurants its cheese on everything or significantly lacking protein or they miss the actual vegetables amirite). All in all, this is my new favourite restaurant in York, I can’t believe I’ve walked past it so many times!