There’s nothing like hot momos to warm you up on a cold day.

After several painful momo-less years, we finally have a few restaurants serving the delectable Tibetan dumplings ubiquitous in Central and South Asia. Heck, we even have two restaurants with momo right in the name—The Momo Spot on Holland Avenue and Momo Bistro on Merivale Road.

Add to this growing list of momo-serving restaurants Everest Cuisine, an Indo-Nepalese restaurant that opened last month and prides itself on serving authentic Nepalese fare.

A Nepalese restaurant? In Ottawa? I couldn’t contain my excitement when Eat the Strip reader Jill wrote to us about it. Fortunately, it was the weekend and when I asked my partner and co-writer of this blog Danielle if she wanted to join me for an excursion, she jumped at the opportunity. Our friends Carol and Ravi joined along for the adventure.

The restaurant is in a strip mall on Carling Avenue, near Maitland Avenue. Photos of Nepal’s iconic mountains adorn the colourful walls. Gentle, instrumental versions of famous Bollywood songs waft from the speakers. Several Nepalese families arrived at dinner time and greeted Sagar, one of the owners, as they walked in.

Our group of four ordered a plate of the Pokhara-style kothey momos, bhatmas sadelko, rayo saag, goat curry, daal gobi Manchurian and jeera rice. In fact, the servers allowed us to share a whole thali, which also came with a tasty yogurt-based desert called juju dhau. We ended up ordering a second round of goat curry because it was that good.

Apart from the fall-off-the-bone goat meat, we couldn’t get enough of the momos. Being from Delhi, I’m used to steamed momos served with a fiery tomato-based sauce, but the Pokhara variety were milder and pan-seared. Quite tasty.

The rayo saag was very different from the typical North Indian saag people are familiar with. Instead of using spinach, the dish resembled collard greens and was cooked with lots of mustard seeds and lightly spiced.

The bhatmas was very crunchy and garnished with a healthy portion of chillies, green onions and ginger. While too crunchy for some in our group, I found it to go well with the daal and rice, providing some heat and textural contrast to the curry-heavy meal.

Between mouthfuls of delicious goat curry and ghee-infused jeera rice, we learned that Sagar has worked in kitchens for over 20 years. He decided to make a go of it on his own when he realized Ottawa needed an authentic Nepalese restaurant. Also trained as a sushi chef, he urged us to try some of the sushi on the menu during our next visit.

Evenly split, our meal came to around $25 per person. We were pleasantly surprised to see that a plate of 10 Kathmandu steamed momos cost less than $15.

We sat and chatted for hours after our meal was over. Eventually we languorously made our way over to our cars, relishing the conversation we had thanks to the wonderful food and ambiance at Everest.