I don’t judge a book by its cover, nor a restaurant by its location in a motel along Highway 99. But I will absolutely judge a Nepalese menu by quantity and quality of momos, and Indian-Nepali Kitchen passes with flying colors. Also with frying colors, since a combination plate of the dumplings serves up a rainbow of steamed, fried, spice-marinated sandheko, and sauce-bathed chili renditions.

The small orange building affixed to the side of the Crown Inn on Aurora fills up quickly, especially on weekends when co-owner Baburam Panday estimates the kitchen makes and serves somewhere between seven and eight hundred momos. Vegetarian and chicken versions of the dumplings each come in 10 different styles, including the butter masala ones: a dozen crescent-shaped, chicken-stuffed momos, deep-fried until crisp enough to resist the come-ons of the brick-red sauce in which they arrive.

The dumplings are made daily or close to it, just as they would be at the streetside stands and Panday’s home kitchen in the Nepalese province of Lumbini, where he learned to cook. Before moving to Seattle, Panday owned a small grocery market, but when he arrived in the US in 2015, he took a job at Bothell’s Everest Kitchen, where he worked with Indian-Nepali Kitchen co-owner Gopal Magar.

Despite the equal-opportunity name, part of Panday’s goal with the restaurant is to show off Nepalese cuisine. There are other Nepalese restaurants in Seattle, but they rarely brag about those origins. “They just put an Indian name and just a few items from Nepal,” says Panday. “We dared to put some on the menu especially from Nepal.”

The two cuisines share many spices, but diverge in techniques, which has helped the restaurant as it introduces customers, most of whom are familiar with Indian food, to more Nepalese dishes. “The main difference between the Indian and Nepali food is the cream and butter,” says Panday. “All the Nepali food is almost dairy free.”

The Nepali Dal Bhat makes a good starting place for newbies: the thali serves as a sampler plate of traditional foods, and Panday says it is the closest thing to what you would get for dinner at someone’s home in Nepal. The arrangement of rice, black lentils, pickles, and mustard greens comes with a choice of curry. “That’s the best food here, after the momos” says Panday. When the meat in the Nepali-style goat curry collapses at even the gentlest touch and swims into its thick sauce of tomato, garlic, and ginger, I’m hard pressed to argue.

But delving deeper into the Nepalese specialties brings some of the best surprises on the menu, like the tangy sourness of the gundruk, which comes from the fermented and dried greens in the potato and bean curry. The Nepalese barbecued meat, sekuwa, which Panday describes like tikka, but juicier, comes with crisp slices of carrots and cucumbers to offset the high level of spice, as well as chatpate, a crunchy puffed rice and herb salad.

Other dishes diverge from typical foods found in Nepal, like the Aloo Rayo ko saag, where Panday explains that, to make their mustard greens into a more substantial dish, they added cubed potatoes. It works, as the greens and spices have more than enough flavor to spread on a wider canvas. The creamy tikka masala momo, on the other hand, is an immigrant restaurant development, something that is not unique to the restaurant, but not found in Nepal itself either.

Thankfully, the huge wooden tables that fill the room give customers plenty of space to try dishes from all over the six-page menu, which includes a full slate of vegetarian options, and a sub-continent’s worth of bread—eight varieties of naan, plus paratha, roti, and puri.

Unfortunately, the tables also team up with the room’s low ceiling and few windows to feel a little dark. But what the space lacks in character, the helpful service and bright food more than make up for, and Panday offers hope for a setting that matches the food in the future.

Less than a year after opening, he and Magar are already looking for a larger location for Indian-Nepali Kitchen. Right now, just one or two big groups pack the unassuming location, leaving latecomers waiting awkwardly on one of the city’s least savory stretches of cement.

The location, ironically, was a big part of the draw when Panday and Magar set out to open the restaurant: it is convenient and has free parking. But they didn’t yet realize how much people would appreciate the firecracker flavors of their homestyle Nepalese cooking. Panday promises they won’t move too far, just to somewhere big enough to accommodate all of their current momo-loving customers and any future ones who haven’t yet learned just how good they can be.