Spicy specialties from the streets of Katmandu

A friend picked up a forkful of Katmandu Kitchen’s lamb masala. “This is the densest meat I’ve ever had,” he announced , waving it around triumphantly. “No light can escape.”

Katmandu Kitchen serves Nepalese food, which is related to Indian food about the same way that Southern barbecue is related to backyard barbecue: that is, earthier and punchier. The usual Indian restaurant serves meat in rich sauces, but Katmandu Kitchen prefers to cook it down to a sort of barely moist essence of meat. It also has its own taste in spices. For instance, it uses little of the yellow spice turmeric.

This is an unfamiliar cuisine around here, so you might expect a Nepalese restaurant to be an ethnic showcase introducing us to the food. Tibet Nepal House in Pasadena does that, but while Katmandu Kitchen (located in Palms) has its share of Tibetan and Nepalese art on the walls, it’s really more of a taste-of-back-home place, appealing to nostalgia for Nepal’s capital city, for which it is named.

That means this menu isn’t limited to mom’s dishes. “Putali Sadak” sekuwa -- rather like chicken fajitas -- is based on and named for the version served at a famous sekuwa joint on Putali Sadak Street in Katmandu.

The country’s best-known dish is probably the Tibetan-style dumplings called momos. Here you get 10 of them with a juicy, ground-meat filling (beef, unless you prefer chicken), mildly scented with ginger, or with a more austere vegetarian filling of mushrooms, onions and peppers. You dip your momo into tomato-based Tibetan hot sauce, available in three degrees of hotness. Momos are steamed unless you ask for them fried, pot-sticker style, which technically turns them into kothes.

Soybeans are a traditional part of Nepalese diet, so it shouldn’t be surprising to find bhat-mas sadheko, which is steamed soybeans tossed with garlic and something that tastes like horseradish. The effect is fascinating and oddly Japanese, like eating edamame with wasabi.

Katmandu chu-we-la, a dish of the Newari people of the Katmandu Valley, also seems far from Indian. In fact, it would fit right in at a California cuisine buffet: It’s a light, mild, salad-like mixture of chicken, onions, green chiles and lime juice.

Nanglo “chilly” (as it’s spelled in English on the menu) must be a specialty of the famous Nanglo Chinese Room Cafe in Katmandu, to judge from the suspicious fact that its name is spelled “chikan chili” in Nepali. Still, this rough, appetizingly browned stir-fry of chicken on the bone with chiles and tomatoes doesn’t seem out of place among the Nepalese dishes.

These are all appetizers. The meat dishes start with that dense lamb masala, tender, gamy and crusted with spices. (Lamb kabab is virtually the same, maybe a little drier.) The best way to eat it is to pick it up in your fingers and gnaw it off the bones. The chicken masala is boneless but cooked surprisingly brown. If anything, it’s even better than the lamb, with a sweet whiff of fennel among the spices.

You can get either masala served on thukpa or a thali. Thukpa is a big, filling bowl of ramen-type Tibetan noodles and vegetables, available naked or topped with meat. As in India, the thali is a platter of rice, dal and “pickle” (a sort of hot chile relish) with your choice of two vegetable dishes and a masala. Both the thukpa and the thali are a bargain if you have a big appetite.

Mustard chicken seems to be chicken masala mixed with tangy, lightly cooked mustard greens, but butter chicken is a stab at more conventional Indian food. It’s basically the familiar murgh makhani of tandoori restaurants, but not as mouth-filling (though definitely buttery -- swimming in butter, in fact). Spinach lamb is the most familiar sort of dish on this menu, a perfectly good North Indian dish of lamb in a spicy spinach puree.

There are also 10 vegetarian dishes. Alu gobi is a flavorful version of the familiar Indian dish of potatoes and cauliflower, heavy on the cardamom. Spinach tarkari uses no spices but plenty of fried garlic and a chile pod. Bamboo curry has a strange, not unattractive pickled flavor, probably because fresh bamboo shoots aren’t available. Katmandu mix is a pleasant though undistinguished hash of mixed vegetables bound with peanut sauce.

The only desserts are khir, a soup-like rice pudding full of the sweet taste of fresh cream, and a carrot-based sweetmeat called haluwa. They’re relatively light, and a good way to decompress after a lamb masala so dense and meaty no light can escape it.

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Katmandu Kitchen

Location: 10855 1/2 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 836-9696

Price: Appetizers, $1 to $5.99; vegetable dishes, $3.99 to $4.99; meat dishes, $5.99 to $7.99; desserts, $1.99 to $2.99; lunch buffet, $5.99

Best dishes: bhat-mas sadheko, alu gobi, Everest momos, Nanglo “chilly,” lamb or chicken masala.

Details: Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily; dinner 4:30 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 4:30 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. No alcohol. Street parking. MasterCard and Visa