Filipino feasting at Kamayan
And steamed fish, enchiladas, and sushi, oh my!
Brrr! Georgia had a cold snap this week, with daytime temps in the low 60s and lows in the high 30s. I bundled up a couple mornings as I headed to the office in a down jacket and scarf. The temps are supposed to come back up to dance in the high 70s this week so I am definitely looking forward to it.
Did you catch a glimpse of the moon this week? We were driving home from dinner, and it was so huge and fat (in a good way!), and it was hovering just above the horizon. Beautiful.
On Saturday night, we met friends out at Kamayan for dinner. Kamayan got a Michelin nod last year, and we were looking forward to it. We booked a reservation really far in advance, and there was a lot of availability. The place was pretty full the entire time we were there, so definitely make a res. We haven’t had the opportunity to have a lot of Filipino food, so we happily took our server’s recommendations, especially based on the face he made after we placed our order. :)
Kamayan does serve alcohol as they don’t have their license yet, so you can BYOB and they charge $5/person corkage. Not a bad deal.
To start, chicken BBQ skewers. The meat was really tender and delicious, and you can see from the photo it was nicely charred. The flavors were familiar and reminded me a bit of my own Chinese BBQ. We were also four people and they gave us four skewers, even though the menu said three, a touch I always appreciate.
They have multiple types of lumpia on the menu and we got the pork and shrimp. I didn’t take a photo of the shrimp because I thought they looked exactly the same but the shrimp have their tails sticking out the end. Between the two, I have to say I preferred the pork, as it was a bit more flavorful. The shrimp had a clean flavor.
We had to order the classic chicken adobo, which was really hard to get a good picture of. It came as two generously sized chicken quarters and was good. If we had been eating alone, I would have just picked up the chicken and gnawed on the bone, but I restrained somewhat. Looking at the photo, I see there is sauce that I didn’t get to try so I wonder if that would have brought it to another level.
This is the kare kareng baka, beef peanut stew which had a ton of veg and shrimp paste served on the side. I am actually not sure if they normally swirl in the shrimp paste and left it out for Westerners. The lady who brought it (and other dishes) would advise us how to eat a dish and then said, but do what you want. At first, I confused this dish with their eggplant coconut curry, which we thought we also ordered but we didn’t. I like that this dish came with a lot of veg - you can see the bok choy, eggplant, and green beans. And also, the piece of beef I had was very tender and had a nice piece of tendon on it! I ate this with some rice (gasp! ). I know. I wanted to try some of their rice. Oh, white rice, how delicious you are.
Our server recommended the lecon sisig as one of their staples. There are a fair amount of pork dishes on the menu. This one is pork belly, snout, and cheek, hm, with pate it says on their site. It comes topped with sauce and an egg, and the advice to mix it all up… or do as you like. So I dutifully mixed it all up. The flavors were really good and very rich, and it’s probably blasphemous to say, but I thought that by being all chopped up so finely, it lost something. But also blasphemous, I bet it would rock in a taco.
We also ordered the pompano, which is fried whole. Despite its impressive arrival, there is really not that much fish on it, and it was perhaps just the teeniest bit overcooked but tasty. I am sad I slept on those pickles until the end because they were fantastic.
Overall it was a fantastic meal and great catching up with old friends. Can’t wait to go back and try more of the menu.
On the way out, we stopped at Sweet Hut which was at the end of our side of the strip mall. While I stood amidst all the baked goods without temptation for a good long while, finally I had to get a Portuguese egg tart and I had Josh get a mini Black Forest cake from the case to try it out.
The egg tart was good, but a bit greasy. Portuguese egg tarts are heavier and more dense than their flakier cousin, the dim sum egg tart. The Black Forest cake we let sit too long in the fridge before eating but it was still moist but had no cherries and thus didn’t pass my rigorous test for birthday level approval. On to the next one!
We had a pretty diverse menu for the week. Sunday night - market day - Josh picked up a beautiful whole flounder, about 1.5#. Flounder really is one of my favorite fish to steam Chinese-style. Flounders are always fairly thin and my mom reminded me to slash it so it cooks faster. This one steamed in six minutes, and I had to fold back the tail to fit in the steamer. It was so good. I had the tiniest bit of (brown) rice to go with it along with a huge pile of Shanghainese bok choy.
They had hatch chiles in our farm box again so I made enchiladas. Instead of doing them rolled, I did them stacked, like the ones I love at Chuy’s. This also let me get away with only having two tortillas rather than three. I smothered them with chile sauce and mozzarella cheese, and broiled them in the oven. They turned out really well.
I also made a very small pan of eggplant parm: two eggplants. I roasted them off and then piled them all together and topped with grated parm. As I learned last time, I cooked it on Sunday and then reheated it on Monday. Josh had it with pasta, of course, and I had it with white beans. This week’s beans are Rancho Gordo caballero, which were creamy, as advertised.
We also made it out to Taka again and sat at the bar like old times. He offers us the kanpachi soup (left) as the first course of our omakase since I was chilled. And then anago with uni was a new one for me also. For dessert, Josh had the rum raisin chocolate mousse. Taka-san loves playing with different flavors.
Lastly, it’s stone crab season! We like to order from Peter’s. I added on some other fish too - tuna, swordfish, grouper. We are having the grouper tonight and I am so excited. Support fisherman impacted by Helene. Order some stone crab to enjoy at your house!
What I’m reading, watching, and listening to:
Top ten tips to help you live healthier. I preferred episode 1 and it summarizes content from several of their podcasts. Episode 1, episode 2. (Zoe)
I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts on menopause at this point and this one was really fascinating. Featuring guest Dr. Stacy Sims, she talks about different ways to exercise and stay fit as you age. I even saved it to listen to again later. (Zoe)
Ah, I love a good deli. (SFA)
Jane Goodall is 90. What an amazing life. Enjoyed this interview a lot. (Wiser than Me on Lemonada Media)
An expose on big meat. I expect this is our contemporary version of The Jungle. Kind of afraid to read it and also happy we tend to buy from small family farms. (Bittman Projtect)
I realized I don’t know much about rice farming and I don’t eat a lot of rice anymore, but I’m sure going to go look up Lundberg Family Farms after listening to this podcast with Brita Lundberg. Great listen. (Radio Cherry Bombe)
Pati Jinich with Jose Andres. Just a fun listen and “capriciously spicy”. Also it makes me want both Mexican and Spanish foods. (Longer Tables)