by Ryan P. Ives

A Tibetan family opened a new restaurant in Davis Square July 9 that features the cuisine and atmosphere of their homeland.

The restaurant, Martsa’s on Elm, is just one more step in the family’s long journey from the mountains of Tibet, through Daramsala, India, and now to Somerville, said Dechen T. Martsa, who with her husband, Choesang, own and operate the new eatery.

The family decided to leave Tibet for Dharamsala, India soon after the Dalai Lama fled the country in 1959, 9 years after the Chinese government invaded Tibet, said Tenzin Choedan, who is Dechan’s mother.

Though she remembers very little of the journey through the Himalayan mountain range to India she said, “We walked out of Tibet when I was five, we’d walk in nighttime and sleep in the daytime, it took almost a month to get to Assam, India.” From there Tenzin moved to southern India eventually re-uniting with her family in Dharamsala.

Tenzin said she and her family opened Rising Moon in 1974, a Tibetan restaurant in Dharamsala that was run as a family business for 19 years.

After moving halfway around the world to Somerville, Tenzin said she opened a restaurant of the same name in Harvard Square in 1999.

She had to close the Rising Moon, after a year because her grandchildren were young and needed more attention, she said.

Tenzin now owns Little Tibet, a Tibetan craft store also in Harvard Square, but said she is always on hand to help her daughter and son-in-law with their new restaurant.

After overcoming many trying experiences, Tenzin has passed on her entrepreneurial spirit to her children, she said.

“Since I was a teenager, I had to take responsibility for myself. The more you have difficulties when you are young, the more you know how to survive,” she said.

Tenzin said she is proud of Dechen and Choesang. “They think that it is good to have their own business instead of working for other people. It is hard work but they are very young.”

Dechen said she is happy to now be a part of the Davis Square culinary scene. “I was looking in Davis and I was also looking in Arlington and Harvard Square. They were way too expensive and I didn’t like the location as much. I like the traffic here better.”

“We’ve been getting some great customers in the first three to four days,” she said.

Dechen came to the restaurant business without formal training, but with a long history of cooking and experimenting with ingredients and recipes from several cultures, she said. “I cook a lot at home, I have a lot of private parties of 50 to 100 people in my home, they all say: ‘I like your food;’ they tell me which food they like and I use it for the restaurant.”

In addition to typical Tibetan dishes like momos, traditional dumplings, and Shamday, a potato, carrots and beef stew, Dechen said she cooks dishes she learned in India and in the United States.

Pointing to the potato and onion bhaji and the fried bread roll she said, “My best friend in India her mother used to make these and I would sit in the kitchen to watch her because I really liked it. The curries are also typical India.”

“Tofu and mushroom we use a lot in Tibet, Tibetans are mostly meat lovers but Tibetans who have settled in the U.S. like them”. In this way the range of cuisine on the menu reflects the Martsa family’s emigration from Tibet,” she said.

Dechen said the Tibetan community in the Somerville area has increased significantly over the last 15 years. “When I first got here there were only three Tibetan families then, now there are over 400 Tibetan people in Somerville, Medford, Malden and Cambridge.”

Tenzin said that the Somerville area has become a major satellite community for the Tibetan government in exile and the now larger Tibetan community gathers regularly and maintains their culture.

Though Dechen now has her own restaurant just 13 years after moving to the United States she said things were not always this easy in Somerville. “The first time I was here it was very difficult. In India I see a lot of people walking and saying, ‘hi.’”

“We were living in Powderhouse Square in Somerville only my mother and I were here. I said, ‘I want to go back to India’, she said, ‘you’ll get used to it,’” she said.

“She was here two years before I got here. Now I feel it is much better here. I was in India last year and this year and I said, ‘I want to go back to America.’”