Mt. Everest Restaurant: An Exotic Excursion to Evanston

When we decided to start this blog, we set out to keep our restaurants limited to the Chicago area.  But the question remained, were we just going to be in the city limit?  The limit of the CTA?  Cook County? We've decided to throw together some mix of the three, so Evanston definitely counts!  A simple ride up the red line to the purple line delivered us to the relative quiet and calm of Evanston.  What's exotic in Evanston?  Mt. Everest is a restaurant that we'd walked by lots of times but never stopped in.  The menu is dominated by Indian food, but they also feature Nepalese cuisine and you don't find that every day!  After a trip to our favorite movie theater in Evanston, we walked over to Mt. Everest to give the food of the Himalayas a try!



Drinks
Mt. Everest has an interesting mix of beers and wines.  Beth had a glass of red wine and Neil had a Taj Mahal, an Indian lager.  It tasted like a pretty standard lager, but the bottle did look nice!

Taj Mahal Lager Beer

Food
When we sat down, the waiter brought these papadum, a very Indian appetizer.  It came with three sauces, a deep red tamarind one, a green mint sauce, and a thick, chunky mango one.

Papadum with Sauces

Our appetizer was chhoela, a fresh grilled chicken (goat was the other option) marinated with garlic, ginger, and "royal Himalayan spices."  Nothing but the finest!  It was a lighter appetizer that came on a nice bed of greens with cucumbers.  The lemon juice squeezed on top was a good addition that added some acidity.

Chicken Chhoela

Neil decided to go with goat and got khasi ko maasu, a stew-like dish.  It's cooked in a "Nepalese village style" with the local herbs and spices.  It definitely had a homey flavor to it.  The goat was tender, dark and really flavorful.  We ordered basmati rice to go with dinner and it was great to mix with the sauce.

Khasi Ko Maasu

Basmati Rice

Beth went with "a very popular mountain dish" called aloo, tama, and bodi.  This was a stew of potatoes, bamboo shoots, and black eyed peas cooked with "mountain" spices.  It was a very hearty stew and mixed really well with the basmati rice.  The sauce was earthy and great and you could see why they would eat this in the chilly  mountain air!  The fresh bamboo shoots provided a really interesting flavor that was hard to describe.

Aloo, Tama, and Bodi

Overall
Mt. Everest is primarily an Indian restaurant, but they have a nice selection of Nepalese food.  We weren't sure how similar the food would be to Indian food, but it had a very unique flavor.  It was nicely spiced and was definitely hearty, which reflected the mountainous region.  The place was busy on a Saturday night, but the service was good and quick considering how busy they were.

What We Learned
Nepalese food isn't the same as Indian food, but is really good in its own way.  The spices taste unique and gave the food its own type of flavor that is not something an American palette would necessarily be familiar with.  Goat meat has popped up more than once in some of the other world cuisines we've tried.  In Chicago it's getting easier to obtain, as more butchers are beginning to carry it.

Foreign Factor
5 out of 10  On a busy night, Mt. Everest seems like a pretty standard Indian restaurant.  The decor is nice but unassuming.  Until you make it to the section of the menu featuring the Nepalese food, the only think separating Mt. Everest from an Indian restaurant is the name.  If the food wasn't so unique and different, the foreign factor would be much lower.

More
Learn more about Nepal and their cuisine.
Kathmandu is a real place, not just a Bob Seger song.