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MoMo's Nepalese Food with a $7.49 Lunch Buffet in Springfield Plaza - Closed


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I was in Springfield Plaza to have lunch at Pho Hong Anh and pick up some Springfield Butcher provisions when I noticed the sign, already up, announcing MoMo Nepalese Food "Opening Soon"....

A quick search indicates that this is not a chain, and that "momo" is a dumpling. I don't know of any other strictly Nepalese restaurants in our area, but I recall in the '80s a Himalayan restuarant in the Adams Morgan area that had some pretty decent stewed goat dishes. I'm looking forward to visiting a new country, in a figurative culinary sense, in Springfield.

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Hurry! You have until 10pm tonight to enjoy their food at half off -- grand opening special.

Carry out today was Chicken Momo, Vegetable Momo, and Butter Chicken. All were delicious -- the veggie momo was a surprisingly full mouthful of flavor, and the chicken momo had a hint of cardamom in it. Both had a pleasant spicy afterburn, and the two dipping sauces were really fresh and complex. The Butter Chicken -- OMFG -- I am still licking the satay-ish sauce off the plate. Wow, was that good!

On the next visit, the traditional portion of the small menu will be tackled -- notably the Chicken Chow Mein and the Masa Bhat, which the owner assured me were decidedly Nepalese dishes.

The owner is Hindu, so there will be no beef and no pork (and no alcohol), so the only meats are chicken and goat/lamb. The buffet is $8.50, or $4.25 today (!), with about eight of the dishes available as a sampler. I'm glad that Springfield has this place. I intend to enjoy it on my occasional forays into that shopping plaza.

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I was the only patron at noon today, and I'm worried that this place might not survive for long. The owner told me that he gets good crowds in the evening, so I'm hopeful.

I basically stole food from him today. The buffet is all you can eat for $7.49, and it is a steal in terms of quality and quantity. The Butter Chicken was on the buffet today, and so was a delectable mixed vegetable in some kind of curry sauce. There was also a delicious goat stew and what looked like creamed spinach but didn't have cream in it and wasn't spinach but a similar leaf. Flavor explosions all over the place.

The owner explained that Nepalese cuisine was somewhat of an Indian-Chinese fusion with local traditions thrown in. I'm really enjoying whatever brief run this place has in Springfield, and maybe getting the word out will get some more mouths and bellies in the door.

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I was the only patron at noon today, and I'm worried that this place might not survive for long. The owner told me that he gets good crowds in the evening, so I'm hopeful.

Their Facebook Page has 392 Likes - that's not *that* bad for a small, brand new restaurant. They also have free WiFi, so you can crunch (numbers) while you brunch (cucumbers). :)

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I'm going to try to get there for lunch next week, if I can pass up Golden Hong Kong ( I never tried Canton Cafe)-I can do my quarterly Trader Joes shopping. Has anyone visited the Filipino market/ food place that's in that area?

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Stopped in today to give this place some support.  Unfortunately, I was one of only three patrons in a half hour around noontime.  For $7.49, the buffet comes with a bottomless fountain drink: use your judgment as to whether you're thirsty enough to waste room on the bubbly stuff rather than on the food.

No goat on the buffet today, but the delicious butter chicken was there alongside a curry chicken.  The battered vegetable pakaudas were addictive, as was the daal. The owner told me he plans to have a tandoori dish on the buffet next week.

I'll definitely have to come back for an a la carte try at the momo.  Maybe for a takeout dinner sometime soon.

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Went to MoMo last night for dinner.  Left very happy.  I had the goat curry with rice naan and a side of palak paneer.  The goat curry was delicious. Goat was well prepared (a couple of tough peices but most were very tender, something I dont always find with many goat dishes) and the curry itself was spot on.  Palak paneer was a very creamy more pureed (not large pieced of spinach) version and was a nice compliment.  The salad you get is a throw away, nothing more more than the undressed iceberg, but the naan was excellent; buttery and thin but in a good way- like a paratha-naan hybrid.  Had some nice char on it. Wife had chicken momos, solid, solid, soild.

Very well taken care of place, but looks on the inside like many kebab places around- big menu board, steam table, sparse decor, styrofoam plates, etc... but the food demands more attention.  From similar set-ups, I have almost come to expect broken, oily curries, but not here.  This was a nice surprise.  (Its cheap too).

Granted it was a Wednesday, but from 7:00- 7:45 PM it was us, one solo diner and a take out order.  Hope lunch is their moneymaker and they make it. I will be back.

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We stopped by for a snack and were pleasantly surprised. The chicken momo(s) were very good especially with the two dipping sauces. Samosa also had very crispy texture, proper spices with potatoes and peas and most importantly not over fried.

For anyone in the Springfield area, its a pretty good place.

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I had several things here the other evening, among them Lamb Choila ($7.99) which was one of the oddest plates of food I've had in awhile. It's possible they'd forgotten this dish, and rushed to prepare it, but what I got was a trilogy of lamb cubes, seemingly roasted, then perhaps warmed via wok, and coated in a turmeric-y curry paste. That was the normal part.

But the two items on the side were Funkville: dry rice, and marinated soybean seed.

I've had a variation of the dry rice at Himalayan Heritage, but this was perhaps even more extreme. Essentially, it was a pile of paper, each piece about the size of a squashed-flat rice kernel. The appearance, texture, and flavor all were that of ... paper. If someone had handed me this, and told me to eat it, then told me I had just eaten paper, I would believe them if I didn't know what it was. What is the function of this dry rice?

"Watch out for the texture," my server told me about the marinated soybean seed. This looked like a marinated couscous salad, except that the "couscous" had a texture somewhere in between unpopped kernels of popcorn and black watermelon seeds. The flavor was perfectly fine, but these were *so* resilient (dare I say "toothsome?" :)) that if you had a loose filling, it would be possible to lose while using your molars (the only teeth you could possibly use to chew this). I think I could get used to these soybean seeds because the flavor was really very nice, but it might take a bit of time.

Do we have any resident Nepalese experts who can answer a simple, one-word question: Why?

The menu at Momo's skews strongly towards Indian over Nepalese, but the Nepalese undercurrent is a strong one. A word of warning: Don't come in here looking for beef. :)

(Note: a thread on Baji spawned from this here.)

[Here's a classic example of a "moderation call" - I want MoMo's to get some attention, so I'm leaving the following two posts here (in the MoMo's thread) for awhile, even though they're strictly about baji. At some point in the future, I'll move them into the Baji thread. These are the types of decisions I make multiple times per day, and is how I leave my imprint on the website. If MoMo's was a "Burger King" and we were talking about french fries, those posts would already be moved. So you can certainly see there's a bias towards independent, mom-n-pops here, I admit it.]

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I had several things here the other evening, among them Lamb Choila ($7.99) which was one of the oddest plates of food I've had in awhile. It's possible they'd forgotten this dish, and rushed to prepare it, but what I got was a trilogy of lamb cubes, seemingly roasted, then perhaps warmed via wok, and coated in a turmeric-y curry paste. That was the normal part.

But the two items on the side were Funkville: dry rice, and marinated soybean seed.

I've had a variation of the dry rice at Himalayan Heritage, but this was perhaps even more extreme. Essentially, it was a pile of paper, each piece about the size of a squashed-flat rice kernel. The appearance, texture, and flavor all were that of ... paper. If someone had handed me this, and told me to eat it, then told me I had just eaten paper, I would believe them if I didn't know what it was. What is the function of this dry rice?

"Watch out for the texture," my server told me about the marinated soybean seed. This looked like a marinated couscous salad, except that the "couscous" had a texture somewhere in between unpopped kernels of popcorn and black watermelon seeds. The flavor was perfectly fine, but these were *so* resilient that if you had a loose filling, it would be possible to lose while using your molars (the only teeth you could possibly use to chew this). I think I could get used to these soybean seeds because the flavor was really very nice, but it might take a bit of time.

Do we have any resident Nepalese experts who can answer a simple, one-word question: Why?

The menu at Momo's skews strongly towards Indian over Nepalese, but the Nepalese undercurrent is a strong one. A word of warning: Don't come in here looking for beef.  :)

 

Apparently, flattened rice (Baji) is a real thing among the Newar people in Nepal.  Here's a video a of an intrepid traveler eating some beaten rice and other Newari food. I don't know "why". Why not.

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I lived in Nepal for a couple of years.  As much as I loved Nepali food, the flattened rice is not a favorite of mine. Out in the villages, there is very little or no electricity so reheating food is a big pain.  You pretty much have to start a fire all over again.  So, when I went to a tea shop outside of the peak meal times, instead of getting regular hot rice with my meal, I would get the flattened rice.  I think the purpose of it is that it keeps and travels well.  Over time, some people just developed a taste for it. 

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I was the only one there about 45 minutes til closing time. Two other folks came in after me and did carry out but I thoroughly enjoyed my mango lassi, butter chicken and chicken momos there. I couldn't finish it all so I brought home the leftovers which I suspect will be great tomorrow.

The butter chicken is ultra creamy and complex. Lighter in color than other versions I've had - not as tomato-ey? and the chicken was tender with a pleasant spicy burn at the very end. There were some limp strands of what was probably cilantro floating in it, which I removed. The rice came on a plastic plate with a little disposable condiment cup of raita that had a stringy viscous texture I didn't care for; I picked out the cucumbers and carrots from the browning shreds of iceberg lettuce, the salad was undressed.

The chicken momo dumplings were probably fine examples of the form - thin, chewy wrappers steamed around minced chicken flavored with onion and ginger. The order comes with a chili sauce or a sauce made with ginger, tomato paste and sesame seeds and some other ingredients I couldn't identify. They were very tasty by themselves but they still couldn't kill the cilantro taste of the filling, ugh. Don't get the momos if you hate cilantro like me. Next time, I want to try dishes off of their Kathmandu Menu - a nice switch up from the everyday but affordable enough to enjoy on a weeknight.

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I was the only one there about 45 minutes til closing time. Two other folks came in after me and did carry out but I thoroughly enjoyed my mango lassi, butter chicken and chicken momos there. I couldn't finish it all so I brought home the leftovers which I suspect will be great tomorrow.

The butter chicken is ultra creamy and complex. Lighter in color than other versions I've had - not as tomato-ey? and the chicken was tender with a pleasant spicy burn at the very end. There were some limp strands of what was probably cilantro floating in it, which I removed. The rice came on a plastic plate with a little disposable condiment cup of raita that had a stringy viscous texture I didn't care for; I picked out the cucumbers and carrots from the browning shreds of iceberg lettuce, the salad was undressed.

The chicken momo dumplings were probably fine examples of the form - thin, chewy wrappers steamed around minced chicken flavored with onion and ginger. The order comes with a chili sauce or a sauce made with ginger, tomato paste and sesame seeds and some other ingredients I couldn't identify. They were very tasty by themselves but they still couldn't kill the cilantro taste of the filling, ugh. Don't get the momos if you hate cilantro like me. Next time, I want to try dishes off of their Kathmandu Menu - a nice switch up from the everyday but affordable enough to enjoy on a weeknight.

The stringy texture in the raita was probably a shredded vegetable (cucumber, onion, etc.) - it wasn't the dairy product itself. I like my raita on the viscous side. :)

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I'm extremely selective of my texture foods. There's only one thing with a similar viscous texture that I will joyfully scarf down and it's Vietnamese dessert (a kind of che) that is sweet and fragrant and even better when you mix it with sticky rice but unfortunately looks like something you'd blow into a kleenex. This raita was not on my list...

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Looks like this place is no more. Sign is down and brown paper is in all the windows with a notice that 'AL Saray Mediterranean Cuisine' is coming soon

I was at Springfield Butcher today and confirmed your sighting. I wonder if Momo's will still use their food truck....

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