This is a Kamayan Feast!

*groovy music * Meet Ryan and Lester!

Ryan is the founder and owner of Wok & Roll A fusion restaurant located in the Reno Public Market And Lester is one of his head chefs!

Theyre the ones who prepared this Kamayan Feast for us today.

So what is Kamayan?

Kamayan means eat with your hands.

And it is a feast.

served typically on a banana leaf meant to enjoy with great people.

Kamayan is Tagalog for hands for eating with the hands.

Kamayan also refers to a traditional communal feast.

For this feast, a long table is covered in roasted banana leaves then rice and various entrees are placed around the table.

When its time to eat everyone sits down and grabs a handful of food.

Literally.

There are no utensils Instead you eat with your hands.

Eating with your hands was common practice in the Philippines for a long time, until the American colonial period where it was supressed.

But now Kamayan has had a resurgence as people have found that its a great way to intimately connect with friends and family.

So right now I'm toasting the banana leaves to give them color.

So as you can see, as I drop, it just changes vibrant.

That's what we're looking for.

traditional would be that the whole table would be lined with the banana leaves.

Right.

And that's where the food would go on.

No plates.

So you can eat with your hands and just make your own little spot right in front of yourself So we have lechon kawali pork belly with the skin on.

It's crispy.

Bistek.

beef and onions.

marinated in like a soy marinade We have traditional lumpia Shanghai longganisa and eggplant tomato salad, We also have salted duck eggs here.

I forgot some fresh fruits, smoked mackerel, garlic, butter, shrimp and garlic fried rice.

So.

Yeah, we just, you know, put on our gloves and start pulling onto our banana leaves and making our own little plates.

My hands are too big.

Oh, hes struggling with the gloves.

I would say go for the rice first and then pick your entrees around the side.

Go?

oh, gosh.

Ooo, warm rice!

let me help a little bit here.

Oh, thank you.

I feel closer to my food.

Have to dig my hands into it.

Yeah, it's very intimate.

That's meant to be intimate with the people that you're sitting with it's more of a communal thing, you know, it brings people together, allows you to have kind of a little party with your food.

So that's fun.

Yeah.

We just have a passion for creating food that resonates with us and sharing that with people in our community.

Our menu is made up of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, American.

And what we're trying to do is take the best of every and just kind of smash it all together.

And that's why we call it fusion.

so is this Kamayan feast more traditional or is it more of a fusion?

it's got our fusion take on it.

There are traditional dishes on here.

Can you tell me again what this is.

Longganisa.

Oh, this the Longganisa.

Oh, okay.

the sauce that it's sort of in really enjoying not just how savory it is, but how tangy it is as well.

That's the sauce that comes amid it out of the sausage.

Longganisa is a sausage made with pork and a variety of spices.

The Filipino longganisa is a derivative from the Spanish sausage longaniza.

In fact, you can use the longaniza to track the spread of the Spanish empire based on what countries have their own interpretation of this sausage.

Longganisa was especially adopted in the Philippines with many variants.

Each being associated with the town or province that it came from.

Whats an eloquent way to eat rice?

Yeah.

How do we eat rice with our hand?

Because I'm struggling right now.

Put all the food you want to eat like this one, the pork.

Mm.

And grab it together with the rice then eat it.

Okay.

Like that.

Really messy but fun!

Yeah.

I really like the Salted duck egg with the eggplant tomato The mackerel with the sriracha sauce Christina, you may have to help me.

Do you need help?

I'm going to give you a pile.

Thank you.

Across this feast are an assortment of bold and unique flavors.

The soy marinades have enhanced the pork and the beef Making each bite packed with a salty umami, slightly sweet taste.

I learned along the way that the power was in the combinations.

Taking the mild fruits and vegetables combining it with salty and savory proteins made for a complete flavor in my mouth.

How long have the both of you been cooking Filipino food?

me in particular About four or five years.

Lester I'm sure.

His whole life.

Yeah.

Exactly.

my whole life I've been cooking with my grandma.

My grandma is the one who kind of taught me the skill of, you know, how to measure and how to do things.

And then the ability to take a recipe and have the good judgment to throw another couple ingredients in there and make it your own.

And elevate it.

so.

Thanks, Grandma.

I am from the Philippines, city of Manila.

in the Philippines, as cooking is a part of our life because if we don't know how to cook, you cant survive.

Because Philippines is, like, surrounded by islands.

So everything is there.

The city of Manila is the capital and second most populated city in the Philippines.

It is on the coast of Manila Bay on the island of Luzon.

As of 2019, Manila is one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

Its four times more dense than New York City.

Manila is home to many business and industries.

In fact, its thought to be one of the worlds first global cities.

It was, and still is, a stop for commercial trade that connects countries across the pacific ocean.

I start cooking at seven and we have five siblings and my mom's it's a fish vendor in the market.

So my mom taught me how to cook like adobo.

and how to cook rice.

It's like, it's like a basic things to take care of my siblings, those siblings.

I studied for culinary for four years in the Philippines, And after I graduated I trained in France for six months, and I got here.

Nice!

so when you were a kid, you were doing Kamayan feasts already, Yes.

Yes, we usually do that because like sometimes we don't have like a big plate.

We only have like a banana leaf and we cut it.

we catch the fish, we cook the pork and we put it together and we get the fresh fruits from the beach.

and I like the idea of sharing the Kamayan here because, sharing your traditional food or your culture from different people, it's, it's really good.

Would you say this right here was called again?

it's a lechon kawali.

crispy pork belly.

Lechon Kawali is deep-fried crispy pork belly.

Its most well known quality, is the amazing crunch you get when you bite down.

*CRUNCH * Its really crunchy.

It involves boiling the pork belly in water and spices, then deep-frying it.

Thats how you get the crispy exterior and the tender and juicy interior.

Lechon Kawali is a traditional Filipino dish that is often used as the centerpiece of the dining table.

Much like the Kamayan feast were having today!

What we're looking for is the crispiness on the skin, but nice and juicy on the inside.

very tender on one side and then the skin is- like Chicharon almost?

Yeah, it reminds me of a Chicharon.

I don't know if I can crunch into my mic *CRUNCH * And then what is this drink that we have?

cucumber lemonade and Halo-Halo which is a sweet jelly shaved ice with leche flan and ube ice cream on there.

Halo-Halo is a popular cold dessert in the Philippines.

Its so popular that Halo-Halo is considered the unofficial national dessert.

Halo is a Tagalog word meaning mix so the whole dessert translates to mix mix or to mix.

Thats because halo-halo is made up of several cold and sweet ingredients that you mix together when you eat it Theres no standardized set of ingredients, but the ones were eating today have shaved ice pandan jellies, mung beans, coconut caramelized banana, condensed milk, leche flan and ube ice cream.

you just, like, crack the ice.

Really kind of like everything down there.

All those jellies and all the real good stuff is at the bottom.

What is ube?

What IS ube.

Alright so it is a purple yam.

used widely in the Philippines and Japan.

But it's got a distinct flavor to it that once you've had it, yo, you know, And in case you havent had it, Ube has a sweet flavor similar to vanilla with earthy and nutty undertones.

It's very purple.

Yes.

And then do we just go at it.

Yeah.

Mm.

this is very sweet and it's rich.

the jelly at the bottom here that flavor is kind of rising up through I would imagine that being in such a hot and humid climate that this is probably like the most refreshing thing you probably can have in a day, I'm enjoying all these textures I got like the crunchy bits of ice and then the, like, squish of the jellies and then kind of like the soft creaminess from the flan.

right?

It's like boba but on steroids, right?

It's like, little.

Like you're digging for prizes.

Yeah.

Little treasure hunt.

I got a piece of coconut.

I want a jelly You got to dig deeper.

I think I accidentally put some towards, like, the bottom bottom.

I'm, like, trying to find them.

Oh, I found one.

*gasp * Im jealous!

What inspired you two, to add Kamayan to the menu, It's not traditional for America, but in the Philippines, it's a way of really bringing people together and sitting down.

And you're doing it with like your immediate family and with your neighbors.

let's say there's a party of eight that comes up and they're split in four, but they want to sit down together.

They could do this all together having a great culinary experience trying something new, typically the keys of making new great friendships.

So it's a way for for us to share our cuisine, our food, our cooking skills, in a way that brings people together.

I'm very lucky that Lester he is.

my head chef, but he's also a really good friend of mine.

We kill it.

We kill it in the kitchen man.

Yeah, you absolutely killed it.

working with Ryan is really good because he knows how to appreciate people.

That's why I love him.

he serves Filipino cuisine.

It's it's really good.

And I'm happy to be here.

Ryan and Lester were very busy and had to run off.

But they inspired us to share this feast the way it was intend with friends!

And in this case the FoodNotes * crew.

How is it?

ready for a struggle?

Yeah.

These are medium gloves.

I aint got no medium hands!

*laughter * There you go.

All right, Bex just had some lumpia!

What do you think?

We and the crew thank Ryan, Lester and everyone at Wok & Roll for letting us explore a Kamayan feast with them.

A Kamayan Feast!