Catering a Newari Fiesta

What is the whole concept behind Newari bhoj? 
Like the Lapti Bhuya (Newari Bhoj) in our Newari culture, we started off by hosting Dashain Bhoj every year in our restaurant where we serve proper Newari food. It was a great success and a lot of people during the festival started bringing in their families to enjoy Newari food here. So, the whole concept was inspired by this bhoj itself, taking traditional Newari cuisine in a more elaborate and modern way by catering it for events. Unlike the traditional bhoj, it is not really a sit down and eat kind of thing, but normal catering for an upscale wedding. 

Have you guys catered any events till now?
Besides the restaurant itself serving Newari food and the Dashain bhoj, we recently catered during the wedding season of January. For that we put together a proper and new catering team so that we could do it with much more dedication for the satisfaction of our clients. 

How does your catering work and how is it different from other catering services?
The thing is our caterings are very different from our restaurants. Our restaurants are kind of a setback in a sense that we have a proper menu and there are certain styles and services that we have been working from the start. But when it comes to caterings, as owners and as a management team, what we do gives us the opportunity to meet and interact with a lot of clients based on the event type, whether it is a meeting, a wedding or birthday parties. Our caterings are customized right from the decorations, which are done according to the setting and working space of the place to what the client wants. And I believe that is what sets apart Nanglo catering from other caterings. We customize food based on what our clients want to eat and in our recent Newari bhoj, our clients wanted a traditional Newari bhoj on their wedding and we took their requirement and transformed them into a more of a formal setting. 

Is there any particular dish that people have loved from your catering? 
In the recent wedding I mentioned earlier, we did a whole spit-roast of an 80-kilo boar which started early in the morning and was slowly cooked and roasted with flavors for at least 13 hours. It was a marvelous effort from our team and the admiration and feedback we got from our guests was really heartwarming, 

How do you guys maintain the ethnicity of the food when it is served in a modern setting? 
We always make sure that we stay intact with our traditional roots. In a typical Newari bhoj, you have 12-13 dishes and you sit down on the floor. But in our events, people get to relish the same traditional food but in a modern way, sitting on the table where it is served to them. The whole menu is broken down into different stations at the events like snacks, appetizers, dinner and is served in a fancier way. 

What are the plans for the future? 
Yes, definitely this is something I really want to expand. People are really fond of Newari cuisine, but I feel like there has been a gap in the way people are providing it. Even today, when someone wants to taste traditional Newari food then they have to travel all the way to Bhaktapur or Lalitpur to do that. But what we are hoping is to take Newari cuisine to a more international standard like any other food without losing its traditional touch. I think we are the first ones to bring the whole concept of catering Newari food in weddings today. We want to keep doing more of it. It is a sort of convenience factor for people and I feel like that is our strength, adding that bit of the Nanglo touch.