A Nepalese kitchen in Aldershot
Nepalese food on Station Road since 2011, run by the same family throughout. What we cook here is what people eat at home.
Aldershot has one of the largest Nepalese communities in Britain, and by 2011 it had plenty of restaurants. What it did not have was somewhere serving the food people actually ate at home.
Gurkha Villa opened that year on Station Road to close that gap. The first menu was short and stubborn about it: momo, choila, sekuwa off the charcoal, aloo tama, and khana sets with the dal refilled as many times as you liked. No korma, no balti, nothing added because a customer might expect it.
Some of that has softened over the years. A Korean section arrived and stayed, because the chef cooked it well and enough people kept asking. But the core has not moved. The achar is still made here in batches. The sekuwa still sits in its marinade overnight. The momo are still folded through the day rather than pulled from a freezer at six.
If someone from Kathmandu sits down and recognises what is on the plate, we have done it properly.
The room is not large. On a Friday it is loud, and most tables have been booked by people who have eaten here before. That suits us. The point was never to be the biggest Nepalese restaurant in Hampshire, only the one worth driving to.
- Nepalese spicingTimur pepper, ginger and cumin lead the blend, ahead of chilli heat.
- Mild to mediumWhere dishes arrive as standard. The kitchen moves either way if you ask.
- Vegetarian by defaultThe dal, the saag, the vegetable momo and several of the thali sets.