A year after opening her first restaurant, Valencia Street’s buzzy Dancing Yak, young, Nepal-born restaurateur Suraksha Basnet is expanding with a new business. At 2400 Folsom Street, the former home of neighborhood German restaurant Schmidt’s, Basnet will open another Nepalese restaurant, to be called Base Camp and to focus on Nepalese small plates. Mission Local was first to report on the new restaurant.
At 280 Valencia Street, a space that other businesses struggled to fill, the colorful Dancing Yak has been a grassroots hit, serving momos (Nepalese dumplings), traditional platters of rice, mustard greens, and potatoes, and a fleet of cocktails named after Himalayan peaks. Busy and popular, “Dancing Yak gave me confidence to open the second restaurant,” says Basnet.
Base Camp will be a partnership between Basnet and chef Tara Ghimire, and current Dancing Yak chefs Indra Khanal and Sunita Bohora will develop its menu, too. “Our chefs are from different parts of Nepal, and they bring years of experience cooking native Nepali food,” says Basnet. Base Camp’s menu will be a departure from Dancing Yak’s, with an emphasis on smaller shared plates and no cocktails, just beer and wine.
“[The] majority of Nepali people have grown up eating tapas,” explains Basnet, “and I want to introduce it to the people in SF.”
Basnet hopes Base Camp will be ready for visitors by the end of October or early November.