Glastonbury food stall Taste Tibet opens Cowley restaurant

Yeshi Jampa and Julie Kleeman have been serving Tibetan food from their market stall in Gloucester Green as well as festivals all over the country, including Glastonbury and Latitude, since 2014.

The couple has now taken to Magdalen Road to set up their own restaurant and sell their own line of chilled food for people to take home.

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The pair met on a mountain trail in India where they were both taking photos of 'snow monkeys'.

A year and a half later they moved to Oxford.

After six years of serving food from Taste Tibet at pop-up market stalls, the couple has opened their restaurant.

The restaurant opened for takeaway on November 13, exactly 11 years after they first met.

Ms Kleeman said that opening a restaurant for the first time in the middle of an unprecedented national lockdown was not an 'odd' time for Taste Tibet to open.

She said: "For us, it isn't that odd a time to open, because for the last seven years, we have been running in markets and festivals, so we have always been serving takeaway foods.

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"So although in the future we would love to make use of the lovely big space and our outdoor seating, we are already very experienced in food that is turned out fast and served well in take-away style boxes for people at home.

"We didn't really deliberate that long on whether to reopen, we know the full way of operating. We've been serving from Silvie cafe on Iffley Road.

"Now our customers have moved round the corner to Iffley Road with us."

Currently, the family is continuing to serve takeaway Tibetan food, however, plan to open the restaurant for sit-down meals in the new year.

Ms Kleeman added: "There are lots of things we would like to put on our menu in time so that people can come and eat indoors.

"For now, we don't have chairs inside or outside and we will probably stick with this way of working until the New Year.

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"During lockdown, we were delivering food around Oxford, food for the freezer or reheating, and we plan to sell this in our shop.

"One of the reasons we call it a shop, not a restaurant is because we want to sell this food so people can take it home.

"We want to take our kitchen beyond our four walls."

Taste Tibet will be located at 109 Magdalen Street, within steps of other independents like Oli's Thai.

Ms Kleeman said: "Originally we dreamed of opening our own place in the market square, as we always imagined it as a place in the city centre, but Magdalen Road, in the long term, we made a great decision.

"East Oxford is home and the people here are family to us, they have been a part of our story for so many years and with so many people working from home we want to be in this residential area where we can open for lunchtime."

The restaurant is open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 5-8.30pm for takeaways.