Restaurant Review: Fast, Tasty Nepali Cuisine at Zimbu 

• Alex Springer

I first tried momos, the Tibetan and Nepali spin on filled dumplings, at the Living Traditions festival about 10 years ago. My affection for cute round dough balls stuffed with meat and/or veggies has been pretty well documented since then, but that transformative experience has stuck with me ever since that first taste.

As momos are often on my mind, I paid a few visits to Zimbu, a fast-casual Nepali and Indian restaurant that has locations in City Creek and Sandy. Their momos are the stuff of legend, and after a recent meet-up with co-owners Raju Subedi and Kapil Thapa, I learned that he was the one serving up those fateful momos that captured my attention all those years ago.

Subedi, Thapa and their business partner Nirman Rajbhandari are the heart and soul behind Zimbu. On the outside, Zimbu might look like it's a one of those fast-casual franchises that has recently swooped in from out of state, but this place is everything you'd want a local restaurant to be. Subedi and his colleagues met while he was attending the University of Utah; as a recent immigrant from Nepal, it wasn't long before he made friends with Thapa and Rajbhandari who were also from Nepal. Their shared interest in Nepali cuisine led them to work together in pursuit of a restaurant that captured all of the flavor and tradition of their native culture.

Thapa, who is the chef of the operation, has worked in restaurants for the past 20 years. "Every recipe at Zimbu bears his (Thapa's) mark, sourced directly from his cookbook," Subedi says. Before the trio opened the first Zimbu location in City Creek back in 2019, Thapa owned and operated the South Jordan location of local favorite Himalayan Kitchen. I also get a chance to chat with him in between orders; he can usually be found running the show at Zimbu's Sandy location.

Both Thapa and Subedi cite a lack of fast-casual Indian food options as the motivation for opening Zimbu five years ago. "These days, food is expensive, and people may not have a lot of time to wait," Subedi says. "So we standardized our recipes. Even when Kapil isn't here, anyone here can make his recipes."

This streamlined process helped their City Creek location become one of the more popular eateries in the area, though their menu did undergo a few changes after weathering the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. "We had to be lean," Subedi says as he reflects on that struggle. "We selected the most popular items, and it taught us a big lesson in a hard way. It was difficult, but we stuck together."

Their current model allows diners to select a rice, noodle or veggie base with a choice of protein—it's one of the few Indian curry spots that serves pork—and then a choice of tikka sauce, coconut sauce and vindaloo sauce. While it was a difficult transition, paring the menu down to a choice of three sauces has actually improved Zimbu's fast casual vibe; each sauce has its own flavor profile, so diners can easily shake things up. My current favorite is the timmur pork bowl with the vindaloo sauce ($11.49), as the timmur pepper marinade and smoky vindaloo sauce nicely complement one another. That timmur pepper came up a lot in our conversation, as it's a fairly common ingredient in Tebetan and Nepali food. It's a cousin to the Sichuan peppercorn, so it imparts a bit of a citrusy tingle to the tongue, which makes it a fun ingredient for Thapa to play around with.

As tasty as the timmur pork was, my favorite use of this peppercorn was found in the creamy sauce ladled all over Zimbu's chicken momos ($8.99). I've grown to love an acidic, vinegary bite to my food, and the sauce that Thapa has prepared hits all the right notes. He suggests eating these little beauties with a spoon so you can catch a generous pool of sauce with each momo, and I have to agree with him on this. According to Thapa and Subedi, this dish is the one that really captures Nepalese flavors, and it's the one they crave even on their sojourns back to Nepal.

On the spicier side of Zimbu's menu, diners can check out the Chilli Momo ($9.99) that sees the same homemade momo recipe dressed up in an Indo-Chinese chili sauce and topped with chopped onion and cilantro. Fans of spicy food won't get too rocked by this interpretation, which means you get less pain and more flavor. Newbies to spicy food may want to tread a bit more carefully with this dish, however.

Regardless of what you order up at Zimbu, it's safe to say you're getting something directly from Thapa's heart and soul. The passion for good food in a simple package that brought Zimbu's owners together is still on full blast for those craving something a little different in the fast-casual world.