Though many restaurants remain open Sundays, few focus on Sunday dinner.

There are exceptions, of course: The Old Mill has a Sunday Family Dinner buffet, The Queen and Beaver does a Feasting Menu, and Barque celebrates with a Family Night Menu every Sunday night with large BBQ platters for sharing, however merely a handful of establishments dedicate a special menu to the evening.

Lamesa’s Kamayan - prononced kah-my-ahn - style dining available on Sunday evenings.

This traditional meal has been making the scene in NYC and San Francisco and now Torontonians are fortunate to experience this very intimate way of eating – using your hands instead of fork and knife – with food spread across fresh green banana leaves, splayed on the table.

Chefs Rudy Boquila, Joash Dy and co-owner Les Sabilano are introducing diners to the tradition of eating with your hands that they grew up with in their families, with the addition of their modern twist to the menu.

Their ‘Piece of Home’ menu features:

Green Mango Salad with heirloom carrots and bagoong caramel
Tinola Broth - a chicken broth with fortified ginger meant as a palate cleanser between dishes
Housemade Pandesal - salt bread
Grilled Corn
Sisig Lettuce Wraps - filled with ground chicken and pork with onion, garlic, ginger and chili
Fried Chicken Adobo
Fried Boneless Bangus - milkfish
Sarsi-Glazed Ribs - Sarsi is a Filopino root beer
Clams and Mussels in Coconut Milk
Soy and Confit Garlic Puree
Housemade Hot Sauce

The extraordinary fare aside, the composition of dinner in front of you is revelatory. A time lapse of history, culture, traditions, back of house to front - A long swath of shrimp paste is brushed onto the leaf, followed by a mixture of soy, confit garlic and curry. A generous scoop of garlic scented rice is nestled next to a pickled egg. A plump piece of friend chicken follows. Then the addition of mussels, and so on. This goes on for roughly ten minutes. This is dinner and a show.

And you need to experience it firsthand. Because no matter what someone tells you, watching the meal being built before your eyes, and the feeling of pinching rice between your fingers and bringing it to your mouth, with a bounty of sweet, salty, crispy, tender foods in front of you, with friends or family at your side, is something you’ll never forget. And want to replicate as soon as possible.

Lamesa's Kamayan Dinner is available only on Sunday evenings - $40/pp.

Lamesa Filipino Kitchen
669 Queen St. W.
647-346-2377

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