FARGO - Gorkha Palace Restaurant is giving Fargo-Moorhead’s Nepalese community a taste of home.
The restaurant at 1000 45th St. S. (Suite 300A) opened Dec. 31, offering an extensive menu of Nepalese and Indian foods.
Shyam Kumar Rai, one of the five owners of Gorkha Palace, says the partners wanted to create a spot where families could gather.
“Many Nepalis don’t go to restaurants to eat because they don’t know how to order in English, particularly the older adults,” Rai said.
“We want to make them very comfortable” and give them “a place to talk,” Rai said. “We want to serve our community in the best way, in a friendly manner.”
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The other partners are Harka Subba, who manages the restaurant, Victor Rai, Dal Rai and Tika Ram Bhattarai.
Subba said the partners want to give Bhutanese Nepalis in the region “a taste of back home.”
Those tastes include, but are not limited to, biryani made with chicken, lamb, shrimp, goat or vegetables; meat or vegetable thukpa (a Tibetan noodle soup), bhutuwa (goat or lamb with bones sauteed in a pan with Himalayan herbs, onion and bell peppers; chicken momo (steamed chicken dumplings served with a mild or hot sauce); tandoori; vegetarian entrees; and various takes on curry, vindaloo, roghan josh and tikka masala.
Lunch hours are 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and dinner from 4 to 9 p.m. daily. The restaurant also caters.
All of the partners came to the United States as refugees, Shyam Rai said. He arrived in 2008.
Shyam Rai said one of the partners’ goals to is to use some of their profits to sponsor activities for the Nepali community, particularly the elderly and school-age children in the summer.
“We try to raise some money and help them,” Shyam Rai said.
