Kamayan: How I Learned to Eat with My Senses

Lobster

When i visit my parents back in Toronto, I know without a doubt that I am going to indulge in some of my favorite foods, such as dim sum, all-you-can-eat a la carte Japanese food, home cooked meals from my mom and Filipino food from my dad’s restaurant.

His family-style restaurant has earned quite the reputation from the city’s hottest bloggers and magazines. Serving traditional Filipino food, they have revolutionized the cuisine by making it healthier and have replaced additives with fresh ingredients. Recently, he and my step-mother introduced kamayan, which translates to “eating with your hands.” It may sound prehistoric and messy, but it is a fully rounded sensory experience that includes our sense of touch.

The first time I ate kamayan was amongst family in the Philippines. I was 6 years old, it was my first visit to the motherland and I had already mastered the thumb technique. This is where you use your thumb as the means of shoveling the food from your fingers into your mouth. If used efficiently no food should fall, but if it does the protocol is to laugh it off after all you’ve already got rice under your nail and probably a grain enjoying some hang time on your cheek.

Despite the territory that comes with manual eating, I remember at that age, I pretended I was a tribal princess. Probably because I had just finished bathing in the rain—as young children do in the Philippines—and I was most likely topless. Needless to say the whole thing was just fun. So, I was looking forward to having fun with my dinner when I flew into a very cold city. After living in Virginia for four years and avoiding flights back during the winter, I had forgotten how cold it gets in Toronto—an unnecessary sensory experience—and I was quickly reminded that I cannot walk around with an unzipped jacket during winter and gloves are essential. I didn’t mind my winter-bitten hands when I saw the spread.

A table lined with banana leaves and a mountain of food in the middle. Jasmine-scented rice topped with barbeque chicken skewers, fried baby squid, grilled pork belly, coconut long beans and squash, beef in peanut sauce, and on the side green papaya salad and crispy chicken skin. And you thought you were treating yourself silly with eating Buffalo chicken wings.

One develops their technique when faced with such a gluttonous task. I create a little mound of rice, top it with meat and here’s the secret, you pinch it all together so it scoops up neatly between your fingers and then you use that thumb to push it into your mouth. Wouldn’t this make for an interesting first date? And you thought sushi dates were tricky.

So I ate, and ate, and ate while trying to keep my left hand clean so that my glass of bamboo beer wouldn’t slip out of my hand. While I was beginning to lose some dexterity in my right hand, I kept making my little food hills. I thought of that little girl, wet from bathing in the rain, and I was again that tribal princess. This was more than just a meal; it was a connection to my
ancestors, the ones who killed Magellan and feasted this way afterwards—a complete sensory experience, by far.