Taking a trek through Greeley’s Sherpa Grill’s Indian and Nepalese cuisine is a tasty adventure

Sherpa Grill offers tasty Indian and Nepalese cuisine in downtown Greeley. Courtesy photo. — Sherpa Grill offers tasty Indian and Nepalese cuisine in downtown Greeley. *Courtesy photo.*

By Emily Kemme

The first time I tasted Indian food was in 1987. The concierge at our Covent Garden hotel in London had steered us to a popular “curry house,” unsurprising in a country that at the time numbered an estimated 840,000 British Indians in its population.

Growing up in Greeley, curry-centric Indian cuisine wasn’t something I’d ever encountered, and I didn’t find the novel taste appealing at first. But that may have had less to do with the ingredients and more to do with the preparation.

As proof, a new chef, Mahesh Limbu, has ushered in truly fantastic menu offerings at Sherpa Grill Indian Nepali Restaurant. The restaurant has two locations in Northern Colorado, in Greeley and Fort Collins. Its predecessor, Royal Nepal, opened in the summer of 2016, but the name changed in 2018.

Ashish Sub, manager of Sherpa Grill’s Fort Collins location, likens the flavor change to cocktail mixology. “If you have a cocktail with the same ingredients, the next time you taste, it is different from the first experience if made with a new bartender.”

Sub said the person in the kitchen makes the essential decisions on timing: when to add salt, fried onion and the gravy. The chefs each have their own style of baking the meats, and the ratio of cream in the gravy — either dairy or dairy-free coconut — also plays a pivotal role in the outcome. Gravy texture will have a different mouthfeel depending on whether dairy cream or coconut cream is used, too.

Most importantly, the chef decides when to put in the masala and how long to cook the gravy in it.

Masala — meaning “spice mixture” — is the key to any dish’s individuality. The mixture of spices can be dry or wet, hot or cool, mild or strong, bland or sharp, according to The Oxford Companion to Food. Dry spices, typical to Northern India, are ground into a powder and often toasted before entering the sauce, or gravy in Indian culinary lingo.

The cuisine of Southern India more often features foods cooked with wet spice mixtures, those that are ground with water, lime juice, coconut milk, or vinegar to make a paste. Spices that are considered hot include cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, and black cardamom. Cooling spices are aromatic, like green cardamon, coriander, cumin, and Indian cassia, which is similar to cinnamon but less sharp. There are also spices used to create lemony, tart flavors, called chaat, that can include ground, dried unripe mangoes, mint, ginger, and dried pomegranate.

Sherpa Grill requires their customers to order from a range of spice levels, from mild to hot+. What Sub’s customers don’t always understand is that ordering a dish extra spicy isn’t going to impart the same fiery heat as if you added habañero peppers to food. Chili peppers or powders and the spices of India and Nepal are two different animals.

“Some of the customers get excited for extra spicy, but sometimes that will kill all the flavors because it separates the flavors in the masala sauce or vindaloo, for example, from the taste,” he said. Sub recommends staying in the medium to medium+ range. You’ll feel the heat but keep the flavor. And you can always add heat with condiments after the dish is served.

Sherpa Grill’s chefs prepare their own masalas, masterminding a discrete combination of herbs and spices for each dish, much like an artist daubs oil paint from the palette to create a unique work of art. For example, if preparing biryani — a rice pilaf type dish layered with lamb, fish, chicken, shrimp, or vegetables — there would likely include a mild mix of cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, bay leaves, and ginger. Biryani has a different taste from vindaloo, a curry dish prepared with potatoes, roasted ground herbs, and gravy made with vinegar to give it a sour flavor. Each curry type has its own uniqueness: korma is rich with coconut sauce and onion gravy; madras blends tomato sauce, herbs, spices, and coconut milk; and saag combines spinach with garlic, ginger, onion, tomatoes, and freshly roasted and ground herbs and spices to create the creamiest mouthful you’ll ever taste. In all, the Greeley restaurant features nine different curry styles on its menu.

Keep in mind that dishes with cream will tone down the heat. Rice, vindaloo and tandoori dishes that don’t have cream may benefit from a lower heat level, Sub said.

“If you put the same amount of spice in a korma or vindaloo, the vindaloo will taste spicier,” he said.

The curries featured on the menu present a variety of regional tastes, the ones most commonly found in either Northern or Southern India.

Other techniques typical of Indian cooking include the tandoori oven, a clay oven used for baking naan, an Indian flatbread, as well as chicken and lamb. Meats are often served as kabobs, or diced and simmered in gravy. A low temperature of 300 degrees Fahrenheit and the oven’s clay composition allows for uniform heat and even cooking. Meats cooked in a tandoori oven, particularly chicken, will retain a reddish color from the masala spices used to marinate the meat. Today’s tandooris are electric, but historically, authentic ovens used charcoal inside. Sub said the modern versions are similar conceptually to barbecuing and are the same as the old style in taste.

Exploring Sherpa Grill’s vast menu is part of this restaurant’s fun. Don’t miss the Momo, a Nepali version of dumplings. The juicy filling is prepared with chicken or vegetables and the Momo are served alongside a bright tomato chutney with a base of pan-fried sesame seeds. The menu also includes a mix of Indo-Chinese foods, including chilli and the must-order Gobi Manchurian, battered and fried cauliflower chunks cooked with ginger, garlic, and soy. It’s a perfect appetizer or side dish. Naan should be ordered as a side to swab gravy off your plate. It also comes in several stuffed versions, including potatoes, jalapeños, and kabuli, a naan bread stuffed with dried cherries and nuts. Sub recommends ordering kabuli naan to dip into spicy korma to balance out the heat level. Naan is available in flour and whole wheat versions.

Because of COVID-19, Sherpa Grill’s popular buffet is closed. The restaurant offers thali, a sampler plate, in its place. The sampler offers a main course choice of chicken ($16.99), vegetable ($14.99), and lamb, fish, or shrimp ($18.99) and includes saag paneer, lentils, rice, naan, and rice pudding for dessert. Because dessert at Sherpa Grill is the icing on the adventure cake, you can switch to something else (carrot pudding, mango custard, or gulab jamun, a syrup-soaked pastry, among others) if you like, Sub said.

As with so much in life, a little understanding of what goes into a meal’s creation makes all the difference in its enjoyment. The tastes served up at Sherpa Grill offer a bit of adventure, something inherently missing in our lives these days.

Locations

Greeley: 908 8th Avenue

Fort Collins: 1501 W. Elizabeth St., Unit 5

Hours

Greeley

Sunday through Saturday
11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
4:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Fort Collins

Sunday through Saturday
11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Taking a trek through Greeley’s Sherpa Grill’s Indian and Nepalese cuisine is a tasty adventure

Locations

Menu

Hours

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