I recently undertook an epic adventure across Nepal - all without leaving a tiny restaurant with only four seats.
The Gurkhas Residency at RAI, in Bayley Street, off Tottenham Court Road, serves Nepalese street food and hot 'marshmallows' - in fact potatoes cooked over a fire - among traditional and modern dishes.
RAI itself is a Japanese sushi bar with an 'omakase' tasting menu. It is pretty intimate with just six seats, but just along its sleek bar, with only four seats, is the Gurkha experience.
The tiny restaurant-within-a-restaurant started as a weekly pop-up but now serves its multi-course tasting menu every day.
I was intrigued and asked a Japanese friend if she'd be up for trying it with me.
The Gurkhas Residency was founded by Shrabaneswor Rai, who wanted to bring Nepalese cuisine to London with a nod to his Gurkha family connections.
We took our seats, which were next to the kitchen so we could see everything being prepared by our chef Deatam Rai - his name is just a coincidence.
The tasting menu costs £49, which does not include alcohol, but we were advised which wines to try with which dishes.
I tried their handpicked oyster with a delicious garnish. I was surprised by the oyster's large size as I'm used to much smaller ones, but it was so tender my teeth sank through it.
We were then brought a chatpate - a popular street food made of puffed rice, potatoes, radish, chickpeas and several spices, lemon and mustard oil.
The dish was served in a wooden bowl with a wooden spoon to signify its humble origins.
At first bite it tasted like a cold, crunchy salad - but then heat of the spices lent it a warmth.
A sip of champagne ramped up this heat, causing a mini furnace in my mouth.
The next dish was a bhogate sadheko and yoghurt sorbet from Kathmandu - a pomelo grapefruit salad with no spice at all, which acted as a palate cleanser.
Deatam then took us to his childhood in the countryside and the skewered potatoes - or 'marshmallows' - they heated over a fire.
At Rai it is cooked over charcoal and served with a side portion of ghee, clarified butter, achar - a spice that gets into your nose - timur, a tomato garlicky spice, caviar and sea salt.
I've never had caviar on a baked potato but it was standout!
Next came succulent lamb with an accompanying curry sauce that was surprisingly good.
Next was Nepal's national food of daal bhat - lentils with rice - two ways.
A new-style daal was presented as a kind of foam - with a surprisingly meaty texture - sitting on a rice cracker. Overall, it would not look out of place in a Masterchef final.
The second was a traditional daal bhat, a comforting bowl of rice and gently spiced lentil.
My companion at this point said that she would take the chatpate as a starter and this traditional bowl, whereas I - a sufferer of terrible food envy - enjoyed tasting everything.
The asparagus dish that came next was served with a kind of vinegar broth, which we both agreed was an acquired taste.
Dessert was a selection of khuwa cheesecake, which had a unique texture, delicious spiced tea ice cream and some toffee-like titaura and pustakari candies made from milk.
The sake we finished with was milky and sweet, not transparent and sharp like the Japanese equivalent.
When we left I felt I had just been on an incredible trip to Nepal, experienced amazing hospitality from my hosts and way too much delicious food.
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