In company with their unique culture, Tibetans have food of a very distinctive character. Everyone traveling in Tibet likes to try authentic Tibetan food, but few can really get used to it.

The flavor of the Tibetan food is fresh, light ,andtender. Salt, onion, and garlic are the main ingredients. Foods in Tibet differ in pastoral areas and agricultural areas. The staple food include roasted highland barley flour, wheat flour, meat, or red food, and milk, or white food. The principle in summer is the white food, while that in winter is the red food. Local flavors in the pastoral areas are mutton sausage, and dried beef.Tibetan foods have the unique quality of being extra warming. Maybe because Tibet is so high and so often cold, Tibetan food developed this special quality.

Among the great variety of Tibetan food, zanba and buttered tea are the most popular and distinguished. The former, made of qingke (barley flour) and tasting a little bit sour, is very nutritious and easy to take, while the latter, a Juema, a Tibetan snack mixture of butter, tea and salt, claims to be a good energy-giving beverage. Quite a few tourists drink it during their stay in Tibet in order to adapt to the high altitudes and dry climate and it becomes quite addictive.

Qinke wine, however, seems to have quite the opposite effect due to its strong after-effects. Many outsiders shrink from the challenge of drinking this wine despite in popularity with the locals. Other typical Tibetan foods include dried meat, mutton served with sheep's trotters, roast sheep intestine, yogurt and cheese.

The basic Tibetan meal is tsampa, a kind of dough made with roasted barley flour and yak butter with water, teror beer. Tibetans live on beef,mutton and milk products. As everybody knows,beef and mutton contain high heat energy,which is helpful for people living in the area of high attitude to withstand coldness. Yak Butter,refined from the milk of cattles and goats,is the daily food of Tibetans.

The prevalent milk products are yoghourt and milk sediment.Firstly put a little of Rtsam-pa,cheese power and yak butter into a tea bowl, then pour tea .Eat the Rtsam-pa after drinking up. With black tea as its original juice,sweet tea contains other components such as milk and sugar,making it more sweet and nutritious.

There are many restaurants in Lhasa, Shigatse, and Zetang, All restaurants of various classes are decorated and furnished in the traditional Tibetan style. Diners can enjoy delicious Tibetan dishes while admiring paintings and murals symbolizing happiness and good luck in the restaurants.High on the menu are such flavors as sausages, barley wine, butter oil tea, beef and mutton eaten with the hands, yak tongue, steamed buns, zanba made from highland barley, pastries, sweet tea, butter tea, dried beef, and xiapuqing, or minced mutton and beef.

All the hotels in Tibet serve Tibetan food and the Tibetan restaurants along Eastern Beijing Road in Lhasa enjoy quite a reputation among tourists. Snow Goddess Palace at the foot of the Potala attracts innumerable tourists with its authentic Tibetan cuisine. If you enjoy a feast there you will be offered the following: For the first course you will be served cold dishes such as zanba, yak meat, beef tripe and ox tongue. Next comes the hot dishes of sheep blood soup, fried sheep lung and stir-fried beef with pickled carrot. The staple is steamed buns stuffed with minced beef and potato, or rice fried with butter. What a treat not only for your stomach, but also for your eyes. Nevertheless, most people only taste a little of these beautiful dishes.

Tibetan food is not the only choice for tourists of today. Different styles of food, such as Sichuan and Guangdong cuisine, are also available at hotels and streetside restaurants in such cities as Lhasa, Zetang and Xigaze. Western restaurants and buffet cafeterias are also available for the slightly more unadventurous of tourists.

You can't say you have really tasted Tibetan food without trying qingke wine, buttered tea, sheep blood soup and yak meat.