Kamay Kainan

It was a reunion of sorts with my friends from high school. Cecille was in town for a couple of days and I met up with her, Lyndon and Celso at The Fort. Cecille came from Cebu where she operates a personal finance enterprise. She was in Manila to accompany her sister in-law to the US Embassy for the needed immigrants visa interview. Celso has been working with Tambunting, a financial services company as liaison officer. Lyndon was without luck and has been unemployed for quite some time now.

I sort of played the tour guide of the group despite that Lyndon and Celso have been domiciled in Manila for quite a time. I asked them if they have been to Bonifacio High Street, as it's the newest opened alfresco shopping and dining destination at The Fort. Convinced that noboby have been there before, I drove them there. I brought them first to Market! Market! for our dinner. Not knowing what each of my friends would prefer to eat, I brought them to a filipino buffet restaurant, known as Kamay Kainan.

Kamay Kainan - a Kapangpangan style resto has a wide assortment of foods, from beef, pork, chicken to seafood and a gastronomic delight of typical filipino desserts such as halo-halo, dirty ice cream and a whole lot more. Beef sampling was prepared a couple of ways, such as in nilaga soup (beef shanks and brisket in soup with potato, cabbage and other vegetables), caldereta style and mechado. Pork dishes include, sweetened pork knuckles, grilled, bopis (inards), dinuguan (pork blood), pork soup, and pork chops. Chicken was fried, with nilaga (chicken soup) and other preparations. Seafood dishes include, fresh oysters, tahong soup, catfish grilled, shrimp tempura, drunken shrimp, fish fillet with soup, fried milkfish and tilapia, and various dishes with vegetables.

The dessert table was huge with more than a dozen ingredients for halo-halo, basically, crushed ice mixed with sweetened fruits and beans and topped with fresh milk and pinipig or ube yam. Fried sweet bananas, banana cake, ginatan or sweet rice porridge with sweet yam, bananas, tapioca and other ingredients cooked in coconut milk. A cart of dirty ice cream in mango flavor, ube and plain vanilla was also ready for the taking.

I feasted on fresh oysters, drunken shrimps, beef nilaga and caldereta, fried milkfish and tilapia, grilled pork chops, tahong and fish fillet. I felt so bloated I picked on the dessert plate that Lyndon fetched for himself as I cannot eat anymore another plateful. Everyone had a hearty appetite and no one was complaining about the taste and quality of the food. I told them intially, we were eating cheap and we did. Iced teas were refillable and it's only a personal choice not to go back to the buffet table and dishes were constantly refilled by the ever watchful waiters.

Our food bill was only Php1,200.00 or Php300.00 per pax (something like US$6.67). Cecille volunteered to pick the check as a treat for us. After eating, we walked towards Serendra plaza and unto the Bonifacio High Street for the night stroll. I related to them the real estate prices in Serendra for the condo units for sale and the kind of clientele patronizing this new hang out. Reaching the High Street, Lyndon was in awe, almost gawking at the 5 floors of Fully Booked, a flagship bookstore with a Starbucks coffee shop inside. Cecille wanted to shop at Crocs and she bought a pair of a 3-inch heeled slip-ons. They liked a lot the manicured lawns, the myriad of fountains, the trellis vines and the sparse crowd that strolled the gardens of Bonifacio High Street. We sat for while at the other end of the strip and talked about our high school days, what have we become and posed for some shots for posterity.

As the night turns colder, we prodded Celso to buy us some hot coffee at Starbucks. We walked back to Fully Booked and browsed around the wide assortment of trade books, travel, novels, magazines, music CDs, and even movies. After a while, we ordered our coffee and sat at Starbucks for more high school reminiscen. When the coffee shops closed its counter, we decided to call it a night as well. I offered to take Cecille to her brother's house and drop-off Lyndon and Celso thereafter at Edsa. We sure had a fun night as we said goodbyes to each other.