Anjali Shrestha
Founder & Executive Chef
Learned the fourteen-pleat fold from her grandmother in Boudha, then spent six years in professional kitchens in Kathmandu and Queens before opening the first Target Momo House.
About us
We are a momo house first, and everything else second
Three kitchens, one recipe book, and a rule that the fold never gets outsourced to a machine.
The short version
A neighbourhood kitchen that happens to have three addresses
Target Momo House cooks the food of the Himalayas and the wider Asian table — momos above all, but also thukpa, chow mein, tandoor plates and the wok dishes that fill a family table on a Tuesday night.
We opened in 2016 with fourteen seats and a single bamboo steamer. What has grown since then is the number of people we can feed, not the number of shortcuts we take. The wrappers are still rolled by hand. The broth still takes eight hours. The chili is still adjusted per table, per guest, per request.
Today you will find us in Murray Hill in New York, Falls Church in Virginia, and Richardson in Texas — each one run by a chef who trained on our pass before they were handed a kitchen of their own.
Our mission
Make the best momo in the country, then make it again tomorrow
We are not chasing a hundred locations. We are chasing the version of this dish that makes somebody stop mid-sentence on the first bite — and then serving it consistently enough that they bring their family back on Sunday.
That mission has a few practical consequences. We keep the menu tight enough that every dish gets real attention. We pay above market so that our folders stay, because a folder with three years of practice makes a visibly better momo than one with three weeks. And we would rather run out of an item at nine o'clock than serve it having sat under a heat lamp.
It is a slower way to run a restaurant group. It is the only way we know how.
Our philosophy
Three things, held to stubbornly
Quality ingredients
Produce lands four mornings a week from local suppliers. Chicken is free-range and never frozen. Our spice blends are toasted and ground in-house on Mondays, because pre-ground masala loses its nerve within a fortnight.
Fresh preparation
Wrappers are rolled from scratch each morning and folded through service. Nothing is pre-steamed and held. When you order momos, the steamer basket goes on after your ticket prints.
Hospitality without theatre
No scripts, no upselling, no hovering. Water gets refilled, chili gets adjusted, and if the table next to you is celebrating something, the kitchen usually finds out.
Inside the kitchen
The pass opens at six in the morning
Dough is mixed before sunrise and rested for two hours. Fillings are seasoned and chilled. By the time the doors open at eleven, three folders have been working the bench for four hours and the first steamers are already stacked.
It is unglamorous, repetitive work, and it is the difference between a good momo and one you remember. There is no version of this where the machine does it better.
Read the full storyThe people
Who is actually cooking
Demo profiles for this sample site.
Daniel Okafor
Head Chef, Murray Hill
Runs the flagship pass. Responsible for the jhol broth recipe that guests keep trying to bribe out of him.
Mira Tamang
Director of Kitchens
Trains every momo folder across all three locations and signs off on each new opening. Counts pleats.
Hungry yet?
See what the kitchen is putting out today
Forty-five dishes, eight kinds of momo, and a chili scale that goes exactly as far as you want it to.