A note on the words: ema datshi is chilies (ema) simmered in a cheese sauce (datshi). Momo are steamed dumplings eaten across the Himalayas, and ezay is the chili relish usually served alongside them. Shakam paa is dried beef or pork stir-fried with chili and radish; nya means fish, and goep is tripe. Hogay is a Bhutanese salad of raw vegetables with soft cheese. Sansho is the Japanese pepper whose tingle numbs the tongue, and cilantro is the leaf sold in Japan as pakuchi. Meshi in this blog’s name simply means a meal.
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LASOLA Bhutan Restaurant on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, Hangover Meshi here. This time I dropped in on Bhutanese food in Ichigaya: “LASOLA Bhutan Restaurant.” People call Bhutan the country of happiness, but apparently it is also a country of chili lovers, where chilies are eaten as a vegetable. Maybe the happiness is thanks to the spicy food! So I made a reservation and went to find out. It is a short walk from Ichigaya Station, down what you might well call a back alley.
Bhutanese food is pretty rare, is it not.
There were all sorts of dishes, so I decided to work straight down the list of everything that looked good.
This was delicious, and I stuck with it all evening! Normally a Bloody Mary means tomato juice, vodka and Tabasco, right. The one here seems to use chili, and it has a proper little kick. This is seriously good!
The name alone tells you nothing, but hogay is apparently a Bhutanese salad, ha.
The ingredients were turnip, cucumber, tomato, cilantro and cottage cheese, with chili and a tingle of sansho pepper running through it — a really delicious salad! I wish the deli counter near me sold this. Bhutanese food seems to be operating at a high level.
And here is the momo. They are dumplings, but the way they are pleated is stylish.
They apparently spread here from the Tibetan cultural sphere, and they are delicious dipped in the house-made chili condiment (ezay) that comes with them.
This ezay is fairly hot, so it is best to taste as you go.
This is what I came for!
Ema datshi. One of Bhutan’s signature dishes. Ema is chili and datshi is a cheese stew, I think? Put together, ema datshi.
I expected it to be quite hot, but the cheese part is very mild and really delicious.
There are whole chilies in there, after all, so I tried one gingerly — and the heat is not that strong. That distinctive vegetable flavor, like a green pepper with a chili edge, is lovely. Really delicious.
This one is shakam paa. Dried pork belly stir-fried with daikon and chili, apparently.
They really do put chili in everything! The dried meat is wobbly and full of collagen.
There is a chili presence, but it is not so hot that you cannot enjoy it.
It takes quite a while to cook, so it seems wise to order it first.
And then, Lion Stout.
I have a feeling this also turned up when I went to a Sri Lankan place (in Japanese) — I wonder whether it is widely drunk in Bhutan too.
Rainbow trout stir-fried with chili, which was listed among the recommendations.
The fine little bones are fine to eat if they do not bother you, so it is best to chew well.
Rather than heat, the seasoning has a clean, refreshing quality. Delicious.
Honeycomb tripe stir-fried with chili. This one is excellent with a drink as well!
The earlier one used fresh chilies; this is an ema datshi made with dried chilies, which is hotter (or at least feels hotter).
Because they are dried they are a bit tough, and you picture something ferociously hot, but perhaps the heat has already leached out into the datshi — it is hot, yet maybe not beyond eating. If anything the datshi picked up more heat, which I found delicious. Which one you prefer probably comes down to taste.
Literally cheese balls with jalapeno inside, deep fried.
I ordered them thinking there was no way they could be bad, and sure enough they were really good, ha. I want these sold in the frozen food aisle.
So, my first time with Bhutanese food. Everything was seasoned really well and felt like a very good fit for Japanese palates. Since I had heard chilies are used as a vegetable here, I had pictured something far more fiery, but most of it was mildly spicy, and not a single dish was too hot to eat. If you want to get a taste of Bhutan done well, I recommend this place! (Though maybe it is hotter over there.)
LASOLA Bhutan Restaurant (Asian / Ethnic / Ichigaya Station, Hanzomon Station, Kojimachi Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.6
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
