Café Review: Mr. Food

Location: Next to Happy Mandala Healthy Kitchen, second floor of Changlam Plaza

Ambience: A warm and pleasant place with a moon-and-star themed décor. There is a large wall painting near the entrance and many other artworks. A wall is dedicated solely to photographs with a lung-dar above it. The staff wear Chinese inspired outfits as Mr. Food is owned by the Chinese restaurant next to it (Happy Mandala Healthy Kitchen). Overall, there’s a lot going on but it works well and gives the place an uplifting vibe.

Cost: $$$ (on a scale of $ to $$$$$)

Main course

• Other than snacks, pasta and noodles are the main choices with a few rice options.
• The spicy garlic potatoes were garnished well and served in a small, cute container; definitely insta-worthy. Liked it so much that we ended up ordering more of it to satisfy our cravings.
• The corn fry cakes, as the name suggests was just corn coated with a a slightly sweet batter fried in oil. It’s not bad but it was a little too dry.
• The crispy potatoes were unlike the usual, they looked and tasted more like pakoras (with potato) instead.
• The chicken lollipop was not crispy like I expected it to be. It was more soft and greasy but still tasted quite good.
• The Chef’s special with roasted chicken was served with ema datsi (traditional Bhutanese chili and cheese curry), steamed mushrooms, fried pakora and ezay. It was a delicious set.
• The veg spicy sambal noodles was prepared with a spicy and sweet sauce and was pretty good. And the pasta was quite standard, as you get in other places in Thimphu so there’s not much to say on that.
• Everything was so visually pleasing and most of them even tasted good.

Beverages

• As soon as we were seated, they served us Chinese green tea in extremely cute, tiny tea cups. It had a mild, herbal taste that added to the relaxing vibe of the place.
• Other than that, due to limited options, we had milk tea and lemon tea which were pretty much ordinary.

Service

A little slow considering the fact that we were the only customers at the time.

OVERALL RATING

On a scale of 1-5 with 1 being “wouldn’t go there again unless it was the last restaurant on earth” to 5 being “would eat there everyday if I could”, I would rate it a 4. I’ve already been there a few times and would definitely go again; love the vibe and the food as well.

Disclaimer: We are in no way affiliated with the restaurant and the opinions expressed above are based on our own experiences.