Lamesa's gives Filipino food a new spin.

What:     Fall/Winter menu Media Dinner
Where:  Lamesa Filipino Kitchen (669 Queen Street West) 

When:   September 28, 2015

Twitter: @LamesaTO // Event Hashtag: #kamayanTO
Instagram: http://instagram.com/lamesato
FB: https://www.facebook.com/LamesaFilipinoKitchen

I was invited with fellow food media people to try out Lamesa's new modern Filipino food menu.  After a recent Toronto Star article about the journalists unpleasant view of some Filipino food owner Lester Sabilano wanted to show people what elevated modern Filipino food could be.  Food is executed by the very talented Daniel Cancino who is classically French trained.

Dinner included:

Ø  Welcome cocktail: Boracay Breezy - dark rum, coconut rum, banana liqueur, house made peach liqueur, macerated strawberry syrup

Ø  Chef Daniel's take on the classic Ensaladang Talong, or roasted eggplant salad. He combines roasted eggplant, a common vegetable side in Filipino cuisine, with eggplant caponata, crème fraîche, salted egg, puffed wild rice and sweet soy. This dish was selected by Zagat Toronto as one the best dishes of 2015. 

Ø  Tuna Kinilaw-  a Filipino style ceviche made with albacore tuna, a coconut calamansi vinaigrette, fresh chilies, and coconut guacomole served with shrimp chips.

Ø  Beef cheek sinigang is traditionally a sour broth dish, often made with pork or shrimp, that includes vegetables such as radish, bok choy, eggplant, and long beans.  Most home cooks admit to using flavour packets to achieve the correct flavour. Chef Daniel has created his interpretation of this classic dish using local vegetables such as radishes, mustard greens and tomatoes and he's created the sour broth using only tamarind and citrus; No flavour packets required!

Ø  Dessert:  Ube leche flan- a Spanish style custard made with sweet purple yam served with puffed wild rice and apple tapioca.

My favourite dishes were the Tuna Kinalaw but if you know me you will know that I love tuna with avocado and citrus so this had my name on it.  The Lumpia were also great little crunchy meat filled bites.  The Beef Bulalo short rib and bone marrow in a broth had the most amazing aroma of star anise and the meat just melted.  

The mind blowing dish of the night was the dessert though.  It was Ube Leche Flan a smooth purple creamy consistency with Green apple tapioca, ground cherry, concord grape jelly, fig and puffed rice. 

Lamesa has reached out to Filipino artist and Sabilano wants Lamesa to be an ART HUB for the Filipino Community.


Our lovely host Mary Luz Meja gave us all some in house made ketchup to take home.  I had a lovely evening with some food blogger friends and some new ones too.

Drop into Lamesa soon and try some of their great dishes and spread the word.

                 

Chef Daniel Cancino

Mary Luz Meja