Tanka Sapkota was born in Nepal but has a Portuguese heart.

Tanka Sapkota is the owner and chef of the Italian restaurant called ComePrima, in Lisbon. With a fighting heart, an unusual creative vein and force able to move the world, offers on a daily bases the very best he knows, and he knows a lot!

He moves like a dancer through the irregular rows of tables, chairs and frapés that punctuate one of the best Italian restaurants in Lisbon. From time to time he disappears into the kitchen or will do any task in the wood oven that soon impresses who enters his restaurant. Then, like a rocket he's off, upstairs, steps two by two, to meet someone who asked for a good grappa to finish the meal in beauty. Wherever it is, Tanka Sapkota suddenly appears, with a smile that can not be dismantled, the eyes of a child who receives the toy with which he dreamed. The house is Come Prima, which vaguely means 'as before'. Less voiceless are the voices of Marino Marini, Domenico Modugno or Mario Lanza that even without sounding in the sound system they insistently accompany you until the end of the meal. In addition to the now obvious Come Prima, songs like Cuando Quando Quando, Guarda che Luna, and Volare, make up an immense repertoire of the late 1950s that astoundingly came to us intact, even at a time when the country did not properly welcome any foreigners. Eternal songs that shout Italy, passion, table towels with typical squares and that make of any pasta garlic and olive oil seem like a delicacy of the gods.

Sapkota is careful in this respect, he does not impose on its habitual customers the torment of always hearing the same songs when they choose their restaurant to eat. On special days, the opposite is true and life is well celebrated in this corner of Lisbon, near the "Janelas Verdes". It was a special day on the past 5th of June, 2014. So special that we heard Come Prima sung and played live through the whole restaurant. Sapkota was in celebration, with the award of the diploma of La Verace Pizza Napolitana, certifying the pizas as authentic and true, made in the Neapolitan style. Pasta, ingredients and roasting, all by precept, and as per the rules. His wife Rita officiates daily at Come Prima next to her husband and on that day there daughter Anjali and the son Adarsha Pratik were present to enjoy in the celebration and the victory. About 18 years after his first job in Portugal, Tanka - Giovanni, an Italian name he adopted at some point in his life, has a remarkable record and a career that he can be proud of... Special among specials.
Tanka Sapkota was born in Damek, Nepal, on January 15, 1974. His mother, Kalawati, and his father, Jaguputi, had four children. Tanka is the second youngest, eight years older than Benjamim, Yogesh, also based in Portugal and owner of Casa Nepalesa, an ethnic restaurant of remarkable success and quality.

Tanka's childhood was happy, in a serenity he considers total. Tanka is Hindu, but he has great admiration for the figure and mood of Siddartha, the buddha-prince, also born in Nepal in Lumbini, about six centuries before Christ. "In Nepal we live side by side, Hindus and Buddhists, in total tolerance," he explains. It is true that every time someone is asks where Buddha was born, most say China, others India, but almost no one says Nepal, a land of prodigies, where Christianity itself may have gone to many of its foundations.
It is certain that it was not in flight that Tanka decided to leave for Germany. There was something inside that called him, since 1992 at least when he dropped out of law school, his heart led him to a repeated motion to get out. In Stuttgart he went to one of his brother's Italian friends. As an 18-year-old boy he just wanted to work and, faced with his older brother's ultimatum, decided to leave the university and try his luck in Europe with a man who, in a way, was like a father. He studied German and had the first contact with Italian cuisine, beginning, as in the movies, washing dishes in a restaurant. One day he put his hand in the dough and realized that he could make it into anything, with good results. In three times, a true pizza maker was born.