Some dishes are so significant, they come with a tagline. In Nepal that honor goes to dal bhat, a simple yet fortifying plate of nutty lentils and rice. The dish is built for endurance, eaten by farmers, porters, and trekkers alike who require a sustained source of energy—up to a whole day, if needed. You’ll notice the phrase printed on T-shirts in the streets of Kathmandu and mentioned in mountain tea shops: “Dal Baht Power 24 Hour!”
A dish that sustains you in the Himalayas, it turns out, nourishes equally well in the Rockies. Lhakpa Sherpa, owner of Sherpa House Restaurant and Cultural Center in Golden, Colorado, throws the slogan around casually while discussing the most popular orders in his restaurant: the same lentil stew and rice, but here in America’s west, zhuzhed up with naan, pickles, and your choice of curry, from veggie to yak.
Lhakpa is Sherpa—an ethnic group that migrated from eastern Tibet to Nepal, where their physical adaptations to high altitude have made them renowned as mountaineers and guides. He is one of tens of thousands of Sherpas who have immigrated from the Himalayas to the United States, many settling in Colorado’s mountain towns, in landscapes 7,000 miles away yet echo the place they left behind. A large number come from the Khumbu region near Mount Everest, trading one range for another while building businesses and families in a community that feels like home. In the process, they’ve sparked a cultural exchange that’s brought some exciting food to Colorado.
The exterior of Sherpa House and Cultural Center features a diverse array of vegetation evoking the beauty of Sherpa villages in Nepal, including fruit trees, bamboo, and mountain ferns.
Photo by Joni Schrantz
At Sherpa House Restaurant, a prayer wheel in the front courtyard is surrounded by diverse plants and shrubs like bamboo, mountain ferns, and juniper, mirroring those of the Himalayas. Inside, Thangka deity paintings line the walls alongside climbing tools and a weathered yellow backpack carried up Everest by a Sherpa sometime in the 1970s. On the patio, colorful Tibetan prayer flags ripple in the breeze.
The space is modeled after a traditional home in Syngma, the village near Everest Base Camp where Lhakpa was born. Each object carries a story: a milking vessel from his family’s yak farm, a wooden container his grandmother used to store barley flour she’d then press into naan.
“She would stand it by the fire for a few minutes to make it hard and crunchy, and then put garlic, butter, salt, and pepper sauce on it and pack it for my [school] lunch,” he recalls. “That memory, I think it stays with me forever.” At one point, he even kept two live yaks outside of the restaurant—an effort to share a culture few visitors encounter firsthand.
Why Colorado felt like home
Pemba Sherpa, a former professional mountain guide, has continued trekking, seen here in Rocky Mountain National Park. His restaurant Sherpa’s Adventurers, in Boulder, has been in operation since 2002.
Photo by Christopher Zeller (L); photo by Matthew Williams/Unsplash (R)
Lhakpa landed in Golden (15 miles west of Denver) as a young tourist in 1996, by invitation from a couple he’d bonded with while leading treks in Nepal. “When you are in the mountains, there is no distraction—only air, nature, and each other,” he says. “You become very close.”
Colorado didn’t feel so far removed. Through years of leading treks, Lhakpa had encountered many Americans from the state, and a growing number of Sherpas from the Khumbu region, including a cousin, had already settled there. Working in Himalayan tourism helped forge lasting bonds with American travelers who became sponsors, employers, and friends. After his first visit, Lhakpa was hooked. He returned on a student visa, and the rest, as they say, is Sherpa history.
By then, a similar story was unfolding 30 miles north in Boulder. Pemba Sherpa arrived in 1991 with little formal education but an instinct that he belonged. “Even though the mountains were a lot smaller, it reminded me of back home,” he says. After a decade running a trekking and world-class climbing company, he decided to fill a different need: Boulder had no Nepali food.
In 2002, he opened Sherpa’s Adventurers Restaurant, in a Victorian house on Walnut Street, part dining room, part gathering place for climbers. The space features a traveler’s library, expedition photos, and gear from Everest climbs. Several Sherpa staff members have summited Everest; the head chef, Jangbu Sherpa, has reached the world’s highest peak 10 times without supplemental oxygen. His ice axe hangs on the wall.
Meanwhile, in Golden, Lhakpa had graduated from college and was pursuing business school when he saw many Sherpa friends struggling to find stable work. In 2005, he launched Sherpa Landscaping, drawing on skills familiar to village life: digging, stonework, clearing land. But winter was a problem. When the ground froze, his friends would be forced to scatter to New York and Dallas in search of income. Looking for year-round stability, he turned to restaurants.
Connecting food to culture
The interior of Sherpa House is designed to resemble traditional homes common in the Solu Khumbu district of Nepal. Dishes run the gamut from classic Himalayan foods to Sherpa chow mein.
Photos by Joni Schrantz
For Sherpas, cooking is ingrained from childhood—a survival skill for challenging days and long, cold winters. “Every kid needs to know how to cook food,” says Lhakpa. “It’s the lifestyle in that [remote] part of the world.” In Colorado, kitchen work could fill in the seasonal gap.
Sherpa House Restaurant and Cultural Center opened in 2009 and quickly became something larger than a place to eat. “The cultural part was very important,” Lhakpa says. “While I was going to college, I thought a lot about Sherpa culture and people, what we can do over here so people could learn more about us.”
Staff speak Sherpa on the job. Ingredients carry Sherpa names. On the menu: fat, juicy momos (dumplings), twisted neatly and filled with meat; Sherpa stew thick with root vegetables; hearty thupka, a Tibetan chicken noodle soup, piquant with ginger, garlic, and spices; and dal bhat with accompaniments served thali-style (in a constellation of small bowls).
“When the Sherpas come here, they don’t feel so homesick,” he says. “When [locals] come here, they feel the authenticity.”
Today, almost 500 Sherpas call Colorado home, with about 200 clustered in the greater Denver and foothills area. Expand that to the broader Nepalese population, also attracted to the comparable high-altitude lifestyle, and the number jumps to between 6,300 and 6,700. “People living in the Rocky Mountain region have more connection to Nepal’s trekking and climbing than someone in Alabama or Kansas,” says Lhakpa. “It’s a mountain-to-mountain connection.”
Restaurants have helped support that link. Sherpa-owned kitchens have expanded well beyond their origins, growing to encompass the full range of Himalayan flavors: Bhutanese, Nepalese, and Tibetan dishes adapted for American tastes, along with their own evolving preferences. “Here we make shrimp chili because shrimp is available,” Lhakpa says. “It tastes good!” Kindred establishments have quietly cropped up from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs; there are now 13 Sherpa-owned restaurants in the state.
Giving back to Nepal through food
Owner Lhakpa selected every cultural artifact and detail that transports Sherpa House visitors to Kathmandu, including the patio’s prayer flags and family photos.
Photos by Joni Schrantz
Across the community, there’s a shared, broader mission. Pemba raised money to build a suspension bridge for his home village in 2000 and, after the 2015 Nepal earthquake, to repair homes left in ruins—efforts he recounts in his 2019 memoir, Bridging Worlds: A Sherpa’s Story. Lhakpa leads volunteer trips through his nonprofit Hike for Help, bringing Americans to Nepal twice a year to build trails and schools.
Their ambition keeps pace. Pemba’s Sherpa Chai, brewed in Colorado from his mother’s recipe, is now distributed in Whole Foods and Kroger. Inspired by his new Colorado roots, Lhakpa has launched Sherpa Brewery, Nepal’s first craft beer company. As president of the United Sherpa Association of Colorado, he’s also leading fundraising efforts to build a dedicated community center. The absence of such an essential space has been palpable. Back home, communal life unfolds over days, through festivals, weddings, and mourning rituals. In Colorado, those practices are harder to maintain without a central gathering place.
He will create one, no matter what it takes. Currently, Lhakpa is selling bricks engraved with donors’ names to fund it, a fitting approach for a man who has spent his life building, whether trails in Nepal or a community in Colorado.
For now, the restaurant holds everything: the artifacts, the memories, the grandmother’s naan, the yaks, the people. You can get a lot of mileage out of a bowl of lentils and rice—7,000 miles, give or take—if you know how to make the meal feel like home.
Where to eat Sherpa cuisine in the Rockies
Himalayan Bistro
This family-owned Fort Collins gem is worth visiting for the thenduk alone, a Tibetan stew of rich broth, potatoes, fresh bok choy and carrots, and house-made pasta.
Sherpa Kitchen
A go-to for celebrations in Boulder, the menu dazzles with fragrant tandoori momos—served sizzling!—and a thali sampler perfect for sharing.
This Nepali-owned Estes Park bistro serves bold curries, ideal after a brisk day exploring nearby Rocky Mountain National Park.
Sherpa Garden Restaurant and Bar
Near the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Sherpa Garden draws you in with a roomy, plant-filled patio, and keeps you lingering with its steamy momo soup: house-made Tibetan dumplings in a tangy vegetable broth.
Golden’s Sherpa House is as much a cultural experience as a meal. Prayer wheels and a shrine corner set the scene before a filling bowl of dal bhat, Nepal’s beloved national dish.
A seasoned Everest summiteer helms this restaurant and bar in downtown Boulder. Sample Nepali and Tibetan dishes in the ample outdoor space, with the jagged peaks of the Flatirons as your backdrop.
