Customers entering the new Everest Sherpa Restaurant are greeted by a mannequin decked out in mountain-climbing gear. Pem Dorjee Sherpa and his wife, Moni Mulepati, dressed the “Everest Sherpa” in their own equipment, used on past trips to Everest.
The couple, who also co-own the Himalayan Bazaar downtown, took over the former Lotus Thai in Oak Valley Centre in mid-July and worked quickly to get it open by early September. Sherpa took on two Nepali-born chefs from popular Indian restaurant Cardamom to help him serve a combination of Nepali, Tibetan, and Indian staples–including quite a few crossover dishes among the three cuisines.
Sherpa’s first foray into food, the Everest Momo food cart at Mark’s Carts, opened this spring. He says the cart gave him valuable food experience, but he recently sold it to a friend to focus on his brick-and-mortar location. “It was actually much harder to get all the permits for the food cart,” he notes. “They’re more concerned about regulating food carts than they are the actual restaurants.”
The restaurant offers momo (a type of South Asian dumpling) and other items made at the food cart, but Sherpa has added to the menu now that he has a larger kitchen. He and Mulepati kept much of Lotus Thai’s equipment and furniture, but they have worked to give the interior a “Sherpa look,” as Mulepati puts it.
“People can come not only to taste our food, we just want to give them a piece of Nepal, how a Sherpa house looks,” she says. The front room is decorated is to evoke a Sherpa village in Nepal, with traditional cloth mandalas, a large landscape photograph of Mt. Everest, and a traditional doko basket woven by Pem’s mother. The back room features Tibetan Buddha statues and traditional wooden paintings. Mulepati has put out a number of books and guides on Nepal for diners to browse, and she encourages people who’d like to know more about her country and culture to come back midafternoon, when the lunch rush has ended and she can sit down and talk.
She adds that Americans are often confused about the term Sherpa. “Sherpa is an ethnic group, but after Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Everest, it became so popular it became like a [job] title.” Her husband, she says proudly, is “born and raised a Sherpa.” Mulepati is also from Nepal, though she is not a Sherpa.
In 2005, Sherpa and Mulepati were the first couple ever to be married on the summit of Mt. Everest (Ann Arborites, October 2014). Sherpa also worked as a guide on the mountain for many years before starting a trekking business in Nepal with Ann Arborite Heather O’Neal. O’Neal was also running the Himalayan Bazaar out of her west-side home, and the couple eventually relocated to Ann Arbor to join her in moving it to Main St.
But a restaurant “was always Pem’s dream,” says Mulepati as she smiles at her husband. “When we moved here, he really wanted to open a restaurant, but with kids and all it was too much, so it was me who was backing up. But finally he decided, ‘It’s time now.'”
Sherpa says he’s been casually looking at spaces for around seven years now. He says he particularly likes the Oak Valley space because the big parking lot makes it more inviting for families.
Everest Sherpa Restaurant, 2803 Oak Valley (Oak Valley Centre), 436-5258. Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. & 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Closed Mon. everestsherparestaurant.com
