Nepali Festival Food in Australia: What to Cook, Buy or Cater for Every Festival

In Nepal you can tell what month it is by what is cooking. Festivals in Nepali culture are not just dates — they are menus. Living in Australia means recreating those menus with Australian ingredients and Australian kitchens, and increasingly, ordering them from the growing network of Nepali caterers and grocery stores.

This guide runs through the festival year — what each festival eats, why, and how to get it done in Australia. Festival dates move every year because the Nepali calendar is lunar; check the Nepali calendar for this year's exact dates.

Dashain (September–October) — khasi, sel roti and feasting

Dashain is the biggest festival of the year, and its food is unapologetically rich. The centrepiece is khasi ko masu — goat curry — traditionally from the goat sacrificed or bought for the occasion, served with rice and sel roti fried in batches for visiting relatives. Families also make jeri, pakauda and seasonal achar, and the tika-day gatherings are essentially open-house feasts.

In Australia, goat from halal butchers or Nepali grocery stores with butcher counters is the standard substitute, and sel roti is made at home or ordered from caterers in the weeks around Dashain. Many Nepali caterers run Dashain-specific menus — bulk sel roti, khasi trays and khaja sets — that book out early.

Tihar (October–November) — sweets and the brothers' plate

Tihar is the festival of lights and of sweets. Sel roti continues, joined by jeri, anarsa, fini roti and fruit-and-nut gift trays for Bhai Tika. The tika ceremony itself has a prescribed plate: sel roti, sweets, fruits, dry fruits and masala, arranged for the brothers.

Nepali grocery stores in Australia stock Tihar bundles each year, and home cooks fry sel roti through October. If you are hosting tika for a large family, caterers will prepare the full Bhai Tika plate including sel roti, sweets and masala trays.

Teej (August–September) — dar khane and fasting food

Teej's feast day is actually the night before the fast — dar khane din — when women gather for a rich meal of rice dishes, sweets, milk-d desserts and delicacies before the day-long fast. The food leans festive: kheer, puri, sweets and rich curries. Teej events across Australia now include dar khane dinners at community halls, usually catered.

Janai Purnima (August) — kwati and rakhi

Janai Purnima — the sacred thread festival — falls on the same full moon as Raksha Bandhan, and its food is kwati: the nine-bean sprouted soup believed to restore strength through the monsoon. Families soak the beans days ahead; in Australia, Nepali grocery stores sell premixed kwati bean packets so the sprouting is the only work left. Many community organisations serve kwati at Janai Purnima gatherings.

Maghe Sankranti and Maghi (January) — warming winter foods

The winter solstice festival is built around foods believed to warm the body: chaku (molasses), ghee, til ko laddu (sesame sweets), sakhar-khanda (sweet potato), khichari and tarul (yam). For the Tharu community, Maghi is the new year and the feasting is larger — pork, fish, rice and dhikri, the steamed rice-flour cakes. Nepali grocery stores stock chaku, sesame and yams through January.

Yomari Punhi (December) — the festival that is a dish

Yomari Punhi celebrates the rice harvest with yomari — steamed rice-flour dumplings filled with molten chaku and sesame. In Nepal, children go door to door asking for yomari. In Australia, Nepali community groups — especially Newari organisations in Sydney and Melbourne — hold yomari-making events each December, and it is one of the best entry points into Nepali food culture for newcomers.

Losar (February) — khapse, churam and butter tea

Tamu Lhosar, Sonam Lhosar and Gyalpo Lhosar — celebrated by the Gurung, Tamang and Sherpa communities respectively — feature khapse (twisted fried biscuits made in batches weeks ahead), butter tea, churam and khaja platters. Community halls in Sydney and Melbourne host Losar celebrations with catered khaja and khapse. Tongba, the warm millet drink, belongs to the same Himalayan food culture.

Weddings, pasni and bratabandha

Nepali ceremonies have their own food traditions beyond festivals. Pasni — the rice-feeding ceremony — centres on the first grains of rice and a spread of sweets. Bratabandha feasts run to thakali-style sets. Weddings traditionally feature puri tarkari breakfasts, kheer, jeri, and for Newari families lakhamari and samay baji platters. These events are where Nepali caterers in Australia do most of their work — a typical function feeds 100 to 300 people with a fixed ceremonial menu plus crowd-pleasers like momo and sekuwa.

How to festival food in Australia

Cook it yourself: every dish linked above has a full recipe on its page. The harder ingredients — tama, gundruk, timur, jimbu, chiura, chaku — are all stocked by the Nepali grocery stores listed by city.

Order it: for large gatherings, book a caterer early — festival weeks (Dashain especially) are the busiest catering period of the Nepali calendar in Australia. Browse Nepali restaurants for smaller dine-in festival meals; many run Dashain and Tihar specials.