Like many aspects of Newari culture, Newari food is all too often regarded as exotic but too weird for outsiders. It is indeed like no other cuisine on earth: complex, subtle, delicious and devilishly hard to make (most dishes require absolutely fresh ingredients and/or very long preparation times).

Most Newari specialities are quite spicy, and based around four mainstays: buffalo, rice, pulses and vegetables (especially radish). The Newars use every part of the buffalo: momocha (meat-filled steamed dumplings), choyila (buff cubes fried with spices and greens), palula (spicy buff with ginger sauce) and kachila (a paté of minced raw buff, mixed with ginger and mustard oil) are some of the more accessible dishes; others are made from tongue, stomach, lung, blood, bone marrow and so on. Rice, besides being boiled, is also made into chiura (beaten rice, a common dry substitute for cooked rice) and chataamari (a sort of pancake made with rice flour). Pulses and beans play a role in several other preparations, notably woh (fried lentil-flour patties, also known as baara in Nepali), kwati (a soup made with several varieties of sprouted beans), musya palu (a dry mix of roasted soya beans and ginger) and bhuti (boiled soya beans with spices and herbs). Various vegetable mixtures are available seasonally, including pancha kol (a curry made with five vegetables) and alu achhaar (boiled potato in a spicy sauce). Radish turns up in myriad forms of achhaar. Order two or three of these dishes per person, together with bhaat or chiura, and share them around.