Himalayan Café — Restaurant in Ladakh

Leh has been absolutely amazing—peaceful, welcoming, full of warmth—until this place decided to single-handedly ruin the streak. Hands down, our only bad experience in all of Leh.

We walked in for a casual lunch, but ended up walking out after 30 minutes of straight-up nonsense. From the moment we entered, the tables were dirty, no one acknowledged us—not even the owner, who casually passed by a few times as if we were invisible. Eventually, someone at the next table (a fellow customer!) handed us a menu. That was a first for me 💀.

Then came the comedy. A staff member swooped in with the urgency of a rescue mission—literally 5 seconds after we got the menu—and expected us to be ready with our order. Bro, we hadn’t even opened the damn thing yet 😂. Once we were ready to order, we waited around 20-25 minutes just to be noticed again. Reverse service, I guess.

When he finally returned, we politely asked, “Could you please clean the table?” His response? “LOOKS CLEAN ENOUGH TO ME.” I kid you not. The table still had someone’s half-drunk water bottle and a generous serving of food crumbs. My guy, you could’ve served a second meal with what was left there.

Anyway, he started taking our order, wrote half of it down, and then—plot twist—just walked off mid-sentence to serve another table. That was our saturation point. We looked at each other, stood up, and walked straight out.

Honestly, the whole thing felt like a prank show without the cameras. Here’s my 50 cents—don’t...

That's the beauty of our experience here, we went for lunch but had to walk out after 30 minutes due to the sheer pathetic service we got to see. I guess only pathetic service was remaining in our experiences with this beautiful city of Leh. So we went in and tables were not clean, no one came to even gave us the menu including the owner who passed by several times. Then someone sitting on a table besides us handed us one, LOL! When we did got the menu, the guy came to take the order with lightening speed of 5 seconds we hadn't even opened the damn book by then 😂. Once we were ready for the order we waited 20-25 minutes to give the order (generally it's the other way around 😂). When the person finally took some time out of his busy schedule, we just mentioned that please have this table cleaned and his response was and I quote "LOOKS CLEAN ENOUGH TO ME" 😂😂 for a table where whoever ate there still had their half finished water bottle just sitting there and tons of food crubs lying around. Now comes the fun part he started writing our order, he wilfully chose to abandon the order in between and started serving the table besides us and that was saturation point at which we just stood up and left. What a joke of a place 'here are my 50 cents lmao'. I wish I could give negative 10...

The Himalayan Café, up two flight of stairs, in the Main Market in Leh, will surprise you with its interiors. Don't let the dull staircase overwhelm you, the restaurant has very strong Chinese restaurant vibes, with dark wooden tables and dark, straight-back wooden chairs in a large hall with wooden floors and wooden rafters on the ceiling. The large wooden windows give you fine views of the Leh Palace, not far from here, and the market courtyard below. There are beautiful runners in Tibetan design on every table, and beautiful, warm-light lamps dangling from the ceiling, as well as on the side-walls of the restaurant. The service is quiet and discreet. This place speaks softly, that it's a moderately-priced, formal restaurant for families and large travel groups. The cuisine is eclectic, somewhat global. Since I feel like having Indian food for once, I order a dal fry and tandoori roti. The dal is a bit overspicy and underwhelming. After finishing my lunch, I sit for a while, the sole diner in a large, well-furnished dining hall, and take in the Leh Palace views outside, and the two large tapestries of the Potala Palace, on the far end of the hall, inside. Tourists should definitely visit the place once to take in the old-time, antique-like ambience of a...