Yakkity Yak: Taking on Tibet's All-Purpose Foodstuff

The Lhasa Snowland Restaurant, located right off the Jokhang Temple square in Lhasa, Tibet, serves up a mean yak steak. Toppings include such Western favorites as cream-of-mushroom sauce and minced garlic. This dish may not reflect traditional Tibetan cuisine, but the tourists and, admittedly, my fellow travelers and I love it.

A yak looks like a black or brown shaggy-haired cow and is used by the Tibetan people for food, clothing, shelter, and labor.

During our second day in the holy city of Lhasa, we ventured to the Snowland by recommendation of our rugged tour guide, who was just out of Nepalese prison. A few yak steaks and yak burgers later, we decided that American bison is the closest comparison.

Of course, aside from the steaks, burgers and other all-American tourist fair, our tabletop included traditional Tibetan dishes such as momos (dumplings) and butter tea.

As we should have expected, the momo wrappers and butter tea were made with butter derived from the shaggy beast and, as adventurous as our taste buds were, our stomachs could not handle the weighty dishes.

Another yak by-product, which sends most foreigners reaching for the antibiotics with one hand and the toilet paper with the other, is its milk. Yak milk is cotton candy pink and kind of resembles a strawberry milkshake. While these qualities evoke memories of Broadway street fairs and Tom’s, it would be wiser to consider whether the milk has been pasteurized.

After leaving Lhasa and Snowland, savory and digestible meals were few and far between. Out on the road, we looked out on an endless landscape of grazing yak and, every once in a while, a yak herder waving from a meadow of yellow flowers. If we stopped, his children or brothers and sisters would swarm around us, inspecting our sunglasses and cameras and backpacks and asking for something sweet to nibble on.

Once, we stopped for lunch in a small village between Shigatse, Tibet’s second largest city after Lhasa, and the Mt. Everest First Base Camp. For some reason lost in translation, we could not eat at the local restaurant and were ushered into the living room of one of the larger homes.

Sitting on battered red and yellow cushions, we watched as our host used a large yak bone to stir an oversized tin pot bubbling in the middle of the room. Through a door on the opposite side of the room, I could see a young girl dicing potatoes and white radishes.

Soon, our host lifted the lid of the tin pot and dished out tiny pieces of meat onto plates of steaming rice and vegetables. Placing the plates in front of us, he said in deliberate English, “Yak curry.”

Nibbling on what turned out to be mostly bone with scraps of tasteless, dry meat, I thought of the salted peanuts I had stashed in the back seat of our car. So much for learning about the native cuisine; I decided to subsist on snack foods until our return to Lhasa and tourist yak steak at the Snowland Restaurant.

For a native, yet gourmet, taste of Tibet, try Tsampa, a natural food restaurant at 212 E. 9th St. Aged yak cheese, which has a loyal following despite its distinctive, well, yak-like taste, is available in New York at fine cheese shops like Murray’s, Fairway, and Whole Foods.