Though I’ve known about momos for quite some time, it was only recently when I first visited Om Momo — a cozy little Tibetan restaurant tucked deep inside a dark nook in Thảo Điền — that I finally tried momos. Inside, one finds a world with a life of its own: at its center stands a mysterious figure, thinly veiled by a cylindrical sheath of turquoise; hung on the walls are vibrantly colored photographs and artworks; and between them sit tables of diners who gaze and converse around salt-rock lamps that warmly illuminate the room.
For those unfamiliar with the dish, the momo is a Tibetan dumpling, distinct from other dumplings in a few key ways. Importantly, the dough is thicker and thus chewier, and its meaty filling is considerably minimalist — which Om Momo’s owner Tsering Tashi Gyalthang attributes to the lack of abundance of ingredients in the mountains of Tibet. At Om Momo, one can choose between a filling of lamb, beef, or chicken, though they also serve a delicious vegetarian spinach and cheese momo. As Tsering puts it, the taste of momos are “pure” in that they emphasize and foreground the natural flavors of its ingredients.
Tsering (left) opened Om Momo in a secluded corner of a residential compound in Thảo Điền.
From producing videos to momos
The journey that brought Tsering — a man who seemingly embodies a combination of charisma and soft gentleness — to open Om Momo is a strange and fascinating one. Ever since arriving in Vietnam as a young man in the early 2000s, Tsering has worked as a filmmaker and director, mostly on boutique commercial films and advertising, though from time to time, also on artistic and documentary films. His career as an ad director took a turn two years ago, however, when he hosted some of his Tibetan friends to work on a film in the Mekong Delta as part of State of Statelessness, an anthology film exploring the Tibetan experience of statelessness that has now screened in prestigious film festivals across the world.
During their visit, he and his friends frequently made and shared food together, including, above all, momos — as Tsering explains, momos are a dish that is communal by nature due to the incredible amount of work that goes into each stage of making them. Such an experience was not anything new, as he was used to frequently hosting Tibetans passing by the city as Tibet’s “unofficial ambassador” to Vietnam, as he jokingly calls himself. Yet, this time, the communal experience of making and sharing momos left him craving for more. “All these years making advertisements as a director, it was never mine, no matter how beautiful I made it,” he recalled reflecting afterwards. “I was feeling at the time I wanted to do something very human. I wanted to do something by hand, something I could hold.” He decided that, whatever happens, he wanted his next project to be related to food.
The following year in 2024, he thus embarked on a project to devote the year to learning just one thing: making the perfect dumpling. He first went back to his hometown to learn from his friends and mom, frequenting old favorite places to get inspiration. When he returned to Saigon with the new knowledge and insights he gained, he started making dumplings at home every day. With the oversupply of dumplings, he offered his cooking to his friends, who tasted all versions, beginning with what Tsering describes as “really terrible” first trials all the way to the momos that one can now find at Om Momo.
The cozy interior of the restaurant.
Though his friends frequently floated the idea of selling his dumplings, Tsering had always been resistant to it. “I was still very uncomfortable about selling,” he explained. “I've been an artist my whole life… and as artists, we always have a kind of shyness about selling our work.” Yet, by the end of his year of making momos, Tsering felt like he was not only more patient, but also braver to tackle new things than ever before.
Thus, when his neighbor who ran a cafe asked if he wanted to take over their spot, he surprisingly said yes. “If somebody had asked me this a year before, I would have said hell no. But because of a year of meditating while making momos, I thought: Why not? Let’s do it. I called up Anto, my best friend back home, to come right away to give me a hand. And that’s how we started.”
A home in Saigon for momos and other Tibetan treats
The striking grace and beauty of Om Momo’s momos are perhaps a testament to the incredible amount of time and effort that Tsering put into mastering their form and taste. Traditionally, momos are had plain, often dipped into a fermented Tibetan chili sauce. Om Momo offers three different house-made condiments at three different levels of spice, all delicious with their own unique flavor profiles, the spiciest bringing with it quite the punch and tingle.
But though Om Momo offers momos plain, they also serve momos on a bed of Indian-style curry sauce with an assortment of spices — each type of momo paired with a different type of sauce. As Tsering explains, momos have become quite popular in India, where it is often served along Indian-spiced sauces as street food. Following the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, tens of thousands of Tibetans, including the 14th Dalai Lama, fled Tibet to seek refuge in India, a country which has since become home to the largest community of Tibetan exiles. Thus, for Tsering, served this way, the dish serves as an homage to India, where he too grew up as a Tibetan refugee in the country’s Northern outskirts.
It is perhaps hard to think of a bite more perfect than a beautifully folded dumpling: a culinary Trojan horse that brings with it a burst of flavor that floods the mouth. Smothered in sauce, the momos become doubly explosive. Much as one reaches for bread to soak up a good sauce, the momo’s chewy dough works wonderfully to accompany the rich gravy and savory filling. I find that there is something extremely satisfying about eating each momo in a single, albeit not so easy to fit, bite, so as to experience its gush of flavor in a single mouthful.
Aside from the specialty momos, the restaurant serves other Tibetan dishes as well. Shapta is a stir-fry dish served with tender beef or chicken with bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes — quite spicy, though its spice works well with the tingmo served on the side, a fluffy Tibetan steamed bun. Other dishes include chicken shamdey, a chicken and potato stew served with rice that Tsering describes as Tibetan comfort food, and kewa datshi, soft potatoes in a rich chili and cheese sauce.
Om Momo’s desserts are also worth trying. Interestingly, Tsering explains that Om Momo’s desserts are inspired by and dedicated to people in this world for whom he cares deeply. The pear poached in red wine and spices atop of the pulp of house-made Tibetan rice wine — the shape of which resembles a lama sitting in meditation — is named the “Drunken Lama,” dedicated to the Bhutanese lama and filmmaker Dzongsar Khyentse Riponche. The chocolate lava cake is dedicated to Tsering’s daughter, who loves chocolate, and the Tibetan rose panna cotta was made to satiate his girlfriend’s seemingly insatiable love for panna cotta.
After our meal, the Saigoneer team also tried Tibetan butter tea: a kind of fermented black tea mixed with a spoonful of butter. Almost every aspect of the tea comes as a surprise. Firstly, the tea is served in what is best described as a wooden bowl, huge in contrast to what one normally expects of a “cup” of tea. But perhaps what is more surprising is that the tea is salty — and as a result, the tea tastes somewhat like melted, salty hot ice cream. The mix of tea, salt, and butter, Tsering explains, offers Tibetans the boost they need to power through the day. While the butter used at Om Momo is cow butter, traditionally, the tea is made with yak butter, the taste of which Tsering describes as “rancid,” a word which admittedly piqued my curiosity. While butter tea may not be for everyone — myself included, somewhat shamefully — it is worth trying at least once for the experience alone.
The ethos of Om Momo is grounded in Tsering’s impassioned belief that “food is storytelling.” This manifests in the way that the dishes at Om Momo are carefully crafted as embodiments and expressions of certain stories from Tsering’s own life. But more broadly, Tsering views Om Momo as a storytelling project also in that, through it, he hopes to incite curiosity in his guests that might in turn set them on a journey to learn more about Tibet: its history, culture, and people, about whom many people in Saigon know nothing about. “For many people, our food is their first introduction to Tibet,” Tsering explains. “The goal is for everything — the art, the music, the food — to make people curious.”
He hopes to incite curiosity in his guests that might, in turn, set them on a journey to learn more about Tibet.
To sum up:
- Opening time: 12pm–9:30 weekdays, 11:30am–10pm weekends
- Parking: Cars and motorbikes
- Contact: 0918 699 697
- Average cost per person: $$ (around VND200,000 VND)
- Payment: All forms accepted
- Delivery App: N/A
Om Momo
11/2 Street No. 57, An Khánh, HCMC
