Taste Tibet

27/08/2026

Thank you to everyone who’s been in touch since the flash flood at Tibet’s border with Nepal yesterday. This post brings you a personal perspective of climatic change on the Plateau in recent years. We hope that this catastrophic event can draw attention to some of the devastating issues facing Tibet and the broader region.

People inside Nepal and Tibet are now in desperate need for clean water, food and life-saving aid. If you can, please consider making a donation through a trusted source 🙏🏽

12/08/2026

Little break between festivals. Ever wanted to camp like a Tibetan? Here’s a wee secret 🌾

04/08/2026

We’re fully into festival season now and reminiscing about all the advice we’ve politely ignored along the way. There is nothing we love more than serving up impossibly delicious food in the middle of a field.

Do you have a dream?

04/08/2026

This lovely write-up tells the story of our Tibetan walnut tree in Oxford’s Aston Eyot nature reserve. You can hear Julie talking more about it tomorrow morning (Weds) at 10.10am on BBC Radio Oxford 🌳

Every week, Yeshi Jampa takes a stroll down to a nature reserve near his home in Oxford and stops to look at a tree that reminds him of his home in Tibet.
Read more here: https://bbc.in/4w53Ee3

23/07/2026

For over two decades, returning home to Tibet was little more than a dream for Yeshi, so he put down literal roots here in Oxford instead. There’s much more we could say about the Tibetan walnut tree we planted just down the road from our house, so consider this just the start of the story.

17/07/2026

Our final menu for summer is here - after Saturday night the restaurant closes until September. We’re not taking holiday, but rather catering festivals, so maybe see you out there! 🎶

If you have any freezer food requests let us have them today if possible. We can make up family-sized boxes for you if you’re holding a summer party. Otherwise the freezers are looking well stocked for meals for one - come and have a forage 🥡

We’re open tonight, Friday, for dine in or take away. Swing by for hot food or dishes for the freezers - or both! 🥟

Doors close at 9.30pm tomorrow evening. We’ll be open during The Rusty Bicycle street party for momos and more. Going out with a party! 🥳

15/07/2026

On a sunny Friday evening in July fifteen years ago today, Yeshi arrived in the U.K. Tonight we are celebrating with football and beer, the English way 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Here is our story.

14/07/2026

In 1980s Tibet, the closest Yeshi ever got to a game of sports was the turnip patch.

Turnips were good value: you could bat them with a piece of wood, roll them down the hill, play catch with them. They also made excellent wheels if you wanted to build yourself a mini tractor.

Yeshi’s childhood was full of play, but organised sports – even just a proper ball – were not available to him.

Until he was about ten, that is. That summer he went to visit relatives in a nearby valley. His cousin had a basketball, and Yeshi had so much fun with it that he let him take it home.

Yeshi loved that basketball but there weren’t any hoops back in his village so there were limits to what he could do with it. It got thrown around inside the family home, and after a few breakages, he stopped playing with it.

In Tibet, objects gathering dust tend to be put to use in other ways. Having long spied the ball’s potential as a useful pair of feeding troughs for his horses, Yeshi’s dad eventually cut it in two.

Some years later, after Yeshi had walked over the Himalayas to his new home in India, he joined the school basketball team (can you spot him in the picture?). Here he experienced the thrill of competition for the first time.

He turns out to be pretty good at any game he turns his hand to. As a child in Tibet he’d never heard of football or tennis, but as a dad in the UK he’s given everything his best shot. Mostly, though, he’s a keen spectator.

Our house has been buzzing with World Cup action these last few weeks. Late at night, after he’s got in from work, Yeshi can be heard shouting at the TV through the floorboards. He’s a natural supporter of the underdog, an experience to which he can relate.

A couple of weeks ago, Yeshi took the kids to watch the tennis at Queen’s. This Sunday he and his brother Nyima are back in London for a one-day international at Lord’s. These are big occasions – they’re the first time that either of our chefs have ever attended a live game. They’re making up for lost time.

All of which is a long way of saying that the restaurant will wind up for a summer of festivals this coming Saturday night, a day earlier than we might have planned, as Yeshi and Nyima are off to the cricket.

Make sure you join us this weekend. The Rusty Bicycle is holding their annual street party on Saturday, with live music starting at 12pm. We can’t think of a better way to close out our summer on Magdalen Road.

If you want to keep tabs us during the nomadic summer months, make sure you’re subscribed to Postcards From Tibet, link in comments. As usual, we’ll be taking you behind the scenes at all our favourite festivals.

This week’s opening hours are as follows:

Fri: 5-9.30pm (dinner only)
Saturday: 12-3 / 5-9.30pm

Our menu is up on the website – check it. Come by for dine in or take away, and be sure to clear space in your freezers before your visit as this is your last chance to stock up on freezer food until September. Sepen chilli oil is also available – get it while you can.

Looking forward to seeing you soon for one last blast of summer!

Julie and Yeshi

07/07/2026

This is the first picture I ever took of Yeshi. He didn’t know I was taking it, but I wasn’t entirely stalking him either. We had met a few hours before on a mountain path in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas.

Yeshi was a Tibetan refugee. He’d been living in India for ten years and was studying English and photography in Dharamsala at the time. I was a tourist with a few days to spare in his adopted home town.

We’d never have met if it wasn’t for the monkeys. Not the cheeky, pickpocketing ones you find everywhere in India, but large, leaf-eating langurs. Yeshi calls them snow monkeys.

Snow monkeys move around according to the season. In winter, when leaves, fruits and flowers become scarce at high altitude they descend into the town, feeding off bark, buds and plant stems.

Click the link in the comments to see the very monkeys that got us into conversation. Knowing them to be shy creatures, Yeshi went in with his camera for a close-up. Looking for a better shot myself, I followed him.

Now many of you know Yeshi to be a big guy hardly lacking in swagger: he’s the self-styled King of Dharamsala. But let’s be clear – what really sold me was his food.

That evening, after he’d guided me around the scenic, circular trail that loops around His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama’s temple, he cooked me dinner.

On the menu was beef thenthuk. This was my first time savouring the hand-pulled noodles that have since become a staple in our family home. I didn’t know then the story of how he’d learned to cook this dish in the yak-hair tent that his family lived in on the grasslands during summertime.

But I did know that I could slurp this soup forever, and that made this man a keeper.

This weekend the kitchen team at St. Catherine’s College in Oxford are cooking up beef thenthuk for two hundred participants of the Oxford Food Symposium, the oldest-established and most respected conference of its kind.

As guest chefs, Yeshi and I are overseeing the lunch. We’re incredibly proud to showcase Tibetan food on such a prestigious stage. As far as we’re aware, this is the first time the cuisine has ever had such a grand billing.

Taking thenthuk out of the yak-hair tent and into Oxford’s largest college is a spectacular full-circle moment for us. It’s also timely. Tibet needs representation more than ever right now. We’re here to serve.

IMPORTANT NOTICE! The restaurant will be open for two more weekends before our regular summer closure. This week’s opening hours are as follows:

Fri: 5-9.30pm (dinner only)
Saturday: 21-3/ 5-9.30pm
Sunday: 12-3 / 5-9pm

Our menu is up on the website – check it. Come for dine in or take away. We also have excellent stocks of sepen chilli oil and freezer food, so make sure you come in and load up before doors close.

Oh, and iced chai will be back. If you’re a newsletter subscriber we’re actually gifting it to you this week. Click the link in the comments to sign up.

Looking forward to seeing you soon,

Julie and Yeshi

03/07/2026

Quick reminder that the restaurant is CLOSED THIS WEEKEND. We’re just back from a wonderful couple of days at Groundswell and I’d like to say we’re resting up but we’re actually heading north to Leicester tomorrow to cater a friend’s 8️⃣0️⃣th 🎈Enjoy the sunshine, folks, and see you next Friday ☀️