The kitchen where my world began

I grew up in a farming family in a remote part of Gorkha, Nepal, where food did not begin with a menu. It began with the land, the season and the people around me. My mother and my sister-in-law, who was like a second mother to me, were the strongest everyday influences on my relationship with food. My grandmother gave me another lesson through the simplicity of her cooking: food did not need to be elaborate to stay in the memory. Relatives, neighbours and the wider community added their own flavours to that childhood education.

Most households cooked from a familiar landscape of crops, herbs and local dishes, yet every home had its own hand. Similar ingredients could become a different texture, aroma or taste depending on how a family handled the herbs and brought the food together. Long before I knew the language of cuisine, I was learning that food carries the character of the person and place preparing it.

The kitchen was where the day was planned

The kitchen was more than the place where we ate. It was where daily life was discussed: what had happened, what needed to be done tomorrow and how the farm would move through the next day. Who would plough with the oxen? Who would dig? Which piece of land had to be prepared for the rice crop? Food, work and family conversation belonged to the same rhythm.

That is one of my strongest early memories of hospitality. It was not a performance. It was the everyday act of feeding people while sharing responsibility, knowledge, worries and plans. A meal connected the household before anyone used words such as service or community.

A calendar remembered through taste

Festival life gave that rhythm another flavour. It often felt as though every few weeks brought a festival, gathering or special day, each with its own sweets and dishes. The year was not remembered only through dates; it was remembered through what was being prepared, who had gathered and which taste appeared only for that occasion.

Travel to a nearby town could open another world. In Arughat, Newari food was readily available. My brother would take me there, and I still remember deep-fried fish with beaten rice, not as a description from a book, but as a taste that has stayed on my tongue. Those small journeys taught me that another community could be close in distance and still offer a distinct food culture to discover.

From Gorkha to a wider world

When I moved into life in Kathmandu from 2002 to 2005, studied hotel management and began working in hospitality, that childhood education came with me. From 2005 onward, life in the UK brought further encounters with different cuisines, working cultures and ideas of welcome. The settings changed, but I kept returning to the same questions: who prepared the food, what shaped its flavour, and how did the experience make people feel?

Nepalese Foodie is where I bring those layers together. It is rooted in Gorkha, but it is not confined to one cuisine. It follows food through memory, farming, migration, friendship and professional hospitality, from the family kitchen to tables across the world.

This is what “From Gorkha to a shared table” means to me. The table becomes larger, but the first lesson remains: food is never only what is on the plate. It is the work behind it, the people around it and the life being shared while it is prepared.