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Q. If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?

A. Japan

Q. If not an actor, what?

A. Filmmaker

Q. A movie character you portrayed that you will cherish for life?

A. Major Aakash (Intu Mintu LondonMa)

Q. If you were granted three wishes, what would they be?

A. To be more productive during the day time, and be good with time and money management

Q. If you could choose between acting and modeling, what would your pick?

A. Acting, as it is a part of a much bigger process.

Q. Who do you look up to as an actor and a model?

A. Jared Leto

Q. A habit of yours which you know needs to be changed but you can’t?

A. Sometimes I end up taking long naps during the day.

Q. A peculiar talent?

A. I can wiggle my ears, haha.

Q. Any new project coming up?

A. I’m in the research phase for my independent project.

Q. What is your mantra for success?

      A. Consistency, passion and setting new limits.

A couple of weeks ago I was driv­ing along what is often referred to as “Restaurant Road” in Jhamsikhel when my attention was drawn to a sign saying The Choco­late Room. This Aladdin’s cave of all things chocolate opened on June 27, so has yet to make its mark on Kath­mandu’s foodie list. But it should. Chocoholics, let’s do this!

First impression is of a modern fresh looking restaurant with three different seating areas. One of the areas is a separate room with glass walls. Perfect for private children’s parties. Giving the partygoers their own space and keeping them away from other customers who want a more peaceful experience.

One wall of the main restaurant is taken up with a display of gifts for sale. Champagne bottles made of chocolate, beautiful crafted boxes to be filled with chocolates, chocolate inspired ceramic mugs, and more. Another wall has chocolate dripping down it (unfortunately not literally). The display case at the counter has an array of mouth-watering goodies from individual chocolates, to mold­ed chocolates and cakes in all shapes and forms.

Being overwhelmed by all this chocolate glitter I hoped the menu lived up to the decor. It did. The menu is presented as two volumes—one with savory items and one with sweet. Starting with the savory, there are crêpes, sandwiches, piz­za, pasta, burgers, wraps and salads (why go to a chocolate cave and eat salad?). Some unique items caught my eye, Savory Waffwich being one of them. Thankfully (read huge por­tions) as it turned out, I had per­suaded a friend who really wanted a chocolate inspired lunch on a wet Wednesday.

So we ordered the Philly Cream Cheese and Chilli Waffwich (Rs 385); basically a stuffed waffle. Coming with two different sauces, and cut into four big slices, it was delicious! The Signature Brunch Sandwich (Rs 685) is brunch (eggs, hash browns) in a bun. With fries. We would have preferred something other than the burger bun but otherwise it was very tasty. The menu states all items take 25 minutes to create. Yes, we did have to wait 25 minutes…

Being a franchise from Australia, by the way of India, the recreation of the menu items was pretty much spot on (although I’m not sure orig­inal Philadelphia cheese is used in the Waffwich). I asked the owner, Saurav Basnet, why he decided to open this type of restaurant. “I’ve always been interested in the enter­tainment and recreation business and wanted to get into the food side,” explains Basnet. He went on to say that while travelling over­seas he saw many chocolate themed restaurants but had yet to see one in Nepal. So when the opportuni­ty to take up a franchise came, he grabbed it.

“Originally The Chocolate Room was Australian but when two India business partners returned home from Australia they bought the com­pany and set it up in India. Today there are Chocolate Rooms in 11 countries,” Basnet briefs. With the knowledge that a lot of the ground work has been done by the franchise HQ folks, Basnet hopes The Choco­late Room will be a learning expe­rience in his budding food-based hospitality career…

With rising anticipation we turn to the sweet menu—sundaes, fondues, cakes, shakes, and choctails galore. We chose, for research purposes of course, the Choco Surprise Bomb. You’ve seen it on Masterchef, now see it live! Our huge chocolate ball had hot chocolate sauce expertly poured over it to split and reveal cake and ice cream inside! All for Rs 495. Our next spectacular creation was the TCR Special Mini Midas Sundae (Rs 425), complete with one of those shooting sparkling candles. The Midas part is in the gold edi­ble cake decoration balls around the top of the glass and the ‘gold’ colored fruit inside. By now the neighboring table was staring at us with wide eyes. They and us will be back!

For further information see The Chocolate Room Nepal on Facebook.

To mark 70 years of Nepal-France diplomatic relations, Alliance Française Kathmandu this week kicked off the France-Nepal Painting Exhibition inside its Jawalakhel premises. With the goal of bringing together contemporary Nepali and French artists, the exhibition displays works of Kiran Manandhar, Sagar Manandhar, B.K Nar Bahadur and Vincent Greby.
What’s most amusing about the exhibition is the variations in techniques between the four painters. B.K Nar Bahadur’s series entitled “Landscape” consists of fine acrylic paintings in cotton canvasses with great many colors. The abstract paintings show close Nepal-France relations, and includes the renowned French jewel, the Eiffel Tower. Kiran Manandhar’s “Love and Emotions” highlight the eyes and the lips, the most expressive parts of the whole human body. The thin, detailed lining of the lips is particularly noteworthy.
Sagar Manandhar’s “Khet Ka Katha Haru” celebrates nature with a contrast color pop in every painting. Besides these three Nepali painters, the only French artist in the exhibition, Vincent Greby, has his “Encounter” series, with its neat and organized lines. The delicate flowers in subtle hues seem to capture every imaginable human sentiment.
Indeed, the exhibition, which ends July 31, is a visual treat for all art lovers. 

Anyone who lived in Kathman­du in the late 80s or the early 2000s has most probably rid­den, or at least seen, the black Bajaj auto-rickshaws, famously known as kaalo tempo (‘black tempo’). Small but loud, the diesel-engine three-wheelers chugged out smoke like Fidel Castro smoking a fat Cuban cigar. These little things with a han­dle-bar for a steering rattled and shook as the drivers maneuvered them through Kathmandu's nooks and crannies, their mechanical meters cackling with a ring, showing the cost of the ride as they moved. And the sound they made, like a half-horsepower water pump over­driven to go deep boring—they didn’t even need horns to shoo the pedes­trians away.

These are from the memories I have. Otherwise, not much can be found on them. At least not in the written form. But there are people who have fond memories of the kaa­lo tempos of Kathmandu. I remem­ber riding them from my bus stop at Gyaneshwor to my hangout at Bhatbhateni during my school days (circa 2000). My friend Bardan and I—He refuses to use his last name because he's given up the “thug life”. And so have I—paid Rs 15 for the ride every day and without the risk of being seen loitering about in school uniforms; we didn’t mind paying the money. The kaalo tem­pos were cheaper than taxis and with the leather curtains attached to the soft-top leather bodies, they were completely opaque when put down, and gave us that obscurity we desired.

 Poster of Nepali Babu

“Rs 11 is what I paid for my ride from Saraswatithan, Lazimpat to the Radisson Hotel,” Jackie Tay­lor, APEX’s own expat columnist recalls. “I totally miss them. They were fastish, cheap and easy,” she adds. “Not great in the rain though. But then the roads were better back then.” When asked if she had any photos of these tempos, she replies, “I doubt as a normal person anyone would be taking pictures with a tempo. Do you take photos of taxies?”

If only I knew they’d soon be gone. If only we had phone cameras and Instagram back then. I might have a few photos with the iconic Tuk Tuks in Bangkok though. Now I realize that the kaalo tempos were for Kathman­du what the Tuks Tuks are for pres­ent-day Bangkok. A means of trans­port that Thailand has been able to commercialize and merchandize.

Another expat Glenice Tulip, who has lived in Kathmandu for 18 years over a period of 30 years starting in 1986, shares her own memories of the black tempos. “When I first came to live in Nepal, the black tempos were my preferred mode of travel,” she says. “The down-side of course was that they were uncomfortable, under-powered and smelt of the fuel they used. Many times I had to get out and help the driver push the tempo up a hill. Trav-elling in them at night was also haz-ardous, as they had very dim lights, and were open to the elements. Still, they were cheap and always available.”

 She narrates a few incidents with black tempos during her stay here. One of them is from between 1986- 1990. “One cold and windy day, I was huddled in a tempo while the driver went to pay for fuel. Sud-denly a dirty hand appeared at the front, not realizing I was there, and attempted to open the ‘glove box’ where the driver kept his money,” she recalls. “I wasn't having that so I slapped the hand hard; the owner screamed like a stuck pig just as the driver appeared.

The driver thanked me and tried to give me money which I wouldn't take, and he wouldn’t take any mon-ey from me. I left the fare on the seat when I got out.” Tulip also has a story of watching a speeding tempo disappear into a large hole in the middle of the road, and then found lying upside down like a dying bee-tle, stuck in mud. But the story is too long to narrate in one go.

Singer, actor and filmmaker Asif Shah remembers the kaalo tempos as the “Nepali Babu” tempo—made famous by a film of the same name released in 1999 with Nepal’s own superstar Bhuvan KC playing a tem-po driver. “It was Tootle for us back then in terms of the price,” he says. “I still ride them whenever I am in Mumbai. Reminds me of the old days in Kathmandu.”

There also was a clever hack that Shah says worked for him every time he took the tempo. “If you pressed the wire leading to the meter pretty hard, the numbers on it changed slower and thus the fare came cheap-er,” he says. (Wish I could turn back time). I tried getting in touch with super-star KC to talk to him about his expe-riences on kaalo tempos. “I’m in an important meeting, I’ll call you back raja,” he told me. Thrice. He never returned the call and then stopped answering me altogether. Well, the superstar life ain’t easy it seems.

Banned because of the ‘pollution’ they caused, and displaced by EVs called ‘safa tempos,’ the lively lit-tle three-wheelers vanished from Kathmandu’s streets. But the mem-ory of them will probably remain in the minds of the Kathmanduites and expats who took them to go around the city. We still get to see the auto-rickshaws in Delhi, Mumbai and other cities of neighboring India, but the ride is never as joyful as it was riding them through the streets of Kathmandu.