Momo Junction

In last year’s Eats feature, we featured Momo Junction and its owners, Sushmita and Rahul Pakhrin, who, despite having no previous hospitality experience, decided to take a chance and open up a restaurant serving the food they know: Darjeeling cuisine from their home in the Himalayas. It was a risk (Sushmita also had no formal training in a restaurant kitchen) but her dedication to recreating the dishes of Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and Sikkim shows here, with flavourful momos swiped through a bold tomato-chilli sauce, and Tibetan meat pies (shafaley) deep-fried to hot, crunchy goodness. For some it’ll feel like dining in a close family member’s home; for others an introduction to an unfamiliar cuisine. Really, that’s the beauty of a lot of restaurants on this list, of which Momo Junction is a perfect example.