Co-owners and chefs Sagar Shrestha and Parashuram Pathak, with manager Khushboo Ghale and staff member Bina Tamang. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
Nepalese cuisine is not often associated with fine dining, but there’s a new Canberra restaurant that may change your mind.
Beyond curry, momos and rice, Tusa embraces traditional ingredients and blends them with sophisticated techniques to totally reimagine what Nepalese food looks like.
Parashuram Pathak, Sagar Shrestha and Rupesh Bohara have worked in some of the world’s best restaurants and with highly regarded chefs. Between them, they have worked under San Francisco’s Dominique Crenn, Rene Redzepi at NOMA in Copenhagen, and Australian chef Josh Niland from Saint Peter.
Bonded by their shared Nepalese heritage and love of fine dining, the three hatched a plan to reinterpret traditional foods from their homeland. So they returned to Nepal to open the first Tusa.
“It was a risk for us to go back to Nepal. But we had no expectation of making money: the restaurant was a pure expression of passion,” Parashuram Pathak told Region.
“We wanted to move away from just lentils and curry, but still use the biodiversity of Nepalese ingredients, and our authentic spices and flavours.”
Opened in 2024, Tusa Nepal soon became a favourite among Australian Embassy staff, and it was former Australian Ambassador to Nepal Felicity Volk who encouraged the team to open in Canberra.
Tusa Canberra opened in May in the space formerly occupied by Muk Bar and Vincent, in Barton.
Tusa reimagines the classic Chicken Saag Curry as a fine plate with spinach puree and fermented daikon radish. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
Tusa’s vision is the same in Australia, but the team is excited to incorporate Australian produce into their dishes.
Goat is a common meat in Nepal, but the team uses Australian lamb for a dish of tamarind-glazed ribs with a cabbage and linseed salad. The fall-apart-tender lamb is beautifully spiced and flavourful, and pairs well with the fresh, crunchy salad.
Chicken Saag – a dish usually served as a curry – features a spinach puree, spiced chicken breast, sautéed greens, and fermented daikon radish. The chicken is brined, resulting in a super-tender bite, and the fermented radish – a staple side dish in Nepal – adds a sour, refreshing crunch.
A traditional ingredient found abundantly in Nepal’s mountainous areas, stinging nettle powder is often used in a porridge-style dish, but the Tusa chefs wanted to showcase it in a totally different light. Sagar reasoned, “If matcha can be in a cake, then why not stinging nettle?”
The result is a green, layered sponge cake with barberry jam and mascarpone. The nettles bring a herby, vegetal quality to the cake quite unlike anything I’ve tasted before! It’s fascinating and fun to get a whole new perspective on a cuisine.
The Tusa team are passionate about showcasing traditional Nepalese ingredients in new ways, like this stinging nettle cake with jaggery and barberries. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
Sagar is passionate about Nepal’s bio-regions, highlighting the distinct cuisines and ingredients that vary with altitude and climate across each area. High in the Himalayas, potatoes and Yak meat are common; in mountainous areas, people eat a lot of buckwheat and millet, and you find more wheat and corn.
The Nepalese flavours are all there in the dishes – tamarind, perilla seeds, spices tempered in ghee and Szechuan heat – but the presentation, service and entire experience are totally different. The attention to detail is superb; the menus are even printed on traditional handmade paper.
We’ve seen pan-Asian, modern Japanese, fusion Asian and rebellious Thai in Canberra, so it’s fabulous to see Nepalese food on a similarly creative journey.
Lamb rib is served with a delicious tamarind glaze. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
The team is excited to showcase this interpretation of Nepalese cuisine to an Australian audience, especially in a place where the Nepalese diaspora makes up such a large part of the population. Parashuram said he was surprised to see that Australians already knew a lot about Nepalese food, so much so that they had to add dumplings to their lunch menu due to popular demand!
A degustation menu and wine pairings are coming soon, and the menu will change seasonally.
Tusa is located at 48 Macquarie St, Barton. They are open from 11 am to 6 pm Monday to Wednesday. Thursday to Saturday, they are open from 11 am to 3 pm for lunch and from 5 pm to 9 pm for dinner. Follow Tusa on Facebook or Instagram.
Original Article published by Lucy Ridge on Region Canberra.
