Yak Yak Yak Yak Yak! by Confucius
In Tibet, you're going to see yaks everywhere. Yak butter, yak cheese, yak horn ornaments ("hornaments?"), yak sacks (wool bags) and even yak T-shirts all remind you of that animal which you actually got excited about when seeing it for the first time from the train window. In Lhasa restaurants, the word beef (niu rou) means "yak meat" whether you're in a Tibetan, Sichuan, or Shanghai style restaurant. It's nearly impossible to get ordinary cow meat, what people outside of Tibet normally consider as "beef" in Lhasa.
If you get tired of yak meat, there are plenty of non-Tibetan restaurants in Lhasa but unfortunately the overwhelming majority of these are Sichuan style. So if you don't like spicy food then there are only a few choices left. I ended up going to the same "Hangzhou Xiao Long Bao" cafe every night over on Beijing Zhong Lu because I could not find any other decent alternatives for dinner.One of my fondest memories of Lhasa was enjoying the traditional "yak dance", a performance by two Tibetan boys inside of a yak costume which is often done when greeting guests. (see additional photo)