Comments on: Eat with Your Hand 101 / Kamayan Tutorial a la Marketman

By: dann

dann — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:55:08 +0000

Me, my brother and a friend of mine had formed this habit of eating lunch on a banana leaf buffet style, just like in the olden days, every other day. We eat standing up with one foot propped on a low chair or anywhere else. its fun and its a very special feeling when we eat like this. basically its more enjoyable.

about the water drinking part, my personal reason is that i dont want to wash away the taste of the food, i love savouring it for as long as i can. :)

PS i love this article.

By: rjfennel

rjfennel — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:26:23 +0000

This just shows how versatile filipino’s are. Sure it looks unethical in some ways but your statistics are spot on. We didn’t have spoon and forks early on, and this is just part of our History and Culture regardless of its visuals. Besides meals are enjoyed better when eating by hand. well of course with your Banana leaf setting, the Beach while munching on some fresh Seafood and Filipino Fiesta meals Priceless!!

By: buckythetarayslayer

buckythetarayslayer — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:14:34 +0000

Eating kamayan style always bring me back to the days when my mom’s side of the family would go to a nearby batis in Bicol and eat there. We’d bring our inihaw na tilapia, baboy, manggang hilaw with tomatoes and bagoong and prawns and just spread everything on those banana leaves. Oh, and of course we never forget our bottles of San Miguel beer and water. They were pretty liberal with the underage drinking (hello, they would buy beer for me and my other 13 year old cousins hehe)and if the beer was slighly warm, we’d lodge em between some big rocks submerged in the batis til they were cooler… Ahh good times…

By: Miles

Miles — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:31:32 +0000

you can also get rid of the seafod smells by squeezing the juice of a fresh kalamansi or putting a small amount of white vinegar on your hands or fingertips before soaping them when you wash after the meal.

By: jules winnfield

jules winnfield — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:02:47 +0000

this topic is my pandora’s box. you have let my evils out mm. definitely way up there on my list of lists is eating with my hands. it’s just so primal in a way that it heightens the dining experience all the more. the flavors take on a lifeform.

i normally gravitate towards the patio or the outdoors when i decide to eat ‘kamay’. the food – as mentioned repeatedly above: shrimp, crabs, catfish, tuna, pork.. (shudder… shudder…), chicken… grilled anything really, and preferably with the bones still on that ‘grilled anything’. either blackened beyond identification or still bloody red, it’s all fine. plus, you rip the meat apart, hehehe this part i like best, because you have no knife and fork, you rip it. rip it good. my cro-magnon life flashes before my eyes…

fish heads. i attack a fish head with my hands, and disassemble the skull to reveal the precious cheeks, eyes, jaw meat and puny brains. leaving the skull parts laid neatly on my plate like an airplane hobby set. shrimp heads are also cool although simple pecause you just sort of pop up the hood and suck the orange goo for brains.

and a critical part of eating ‘kamay’ is the holy water of this event.–> the sawsawan. no kamayan should be without one. this is my weakness, my pornography. believe me you (ü), a ceremony of mine after eating is to sip the sawsawan from that little mongkok, regarless of the dirtied state it is in, with the bits of meat, fishbones, shrimp moustache, onion, chili, regardless of the resulting liquid color from the combined vinegar, soy sauce, patis, calamansi, sweat from my forehead, or even with the kaleidoscope formed on the surface by all that floating black-charcoal-carbon-stuff, even if there have been more than a dozen hands that have dipped their fingers in it along with the ‘grilled anything’ (provided i know these people)… i will still sip the sawsawan from that little mongkok….