Kamayan at 42: Bringing back the delicious past

I remember the first time I set foot in this new restaurant called Kamayan on Pasay Road, Makati, back in the late 1970s. As soon as we — a party of seven, including a toddler — were seated, we noticed the banana leaf-covered wooden plates gingerly laid on our table. Baffled, one of us couldn’t help asking, “But where are the spoons and forks?” I blushed with embarrassment when we were told that the place is called Kamayan simply because we were supposed to eat with our hands.

At Kamayan, you could see your favorite basketball stars, movie stars, and society’s creme de la creme digging into humongous servings of sugpo sa aligue, asadong alimasag, inihaw, and kare-kare with their bare hands. It was the best spot for stargazing. These celebrities even left their handprints on the resto’s ceiling to prove they had a mouthful of fun.   

The fun was tripled with Vicvic Villavicencio’s Triple V chain of restaurants (now Dads World Buffet, which includes Saisaki and Kamayan). Today, celebrating 42 years of food and fun (and more food and more fun), Kamayan is bringing back its delicious past.

“We’re actually looking for a place to reopen or re-launch Kamayan as a brand, which was my dad’s magnificent dream,” discloses Pia Villavicencio-Lago. “So, fingers crossed, within a year, we will have Kamayan just the way it was before it closed down on Pasay Road due to the construction of the flyover. Before Dad passed away, we already completed the entire menu for the new Kamayan.”

And what’s on the new Kamayan menu? Pia reveals, “We’re bringing back what we had before, like the biggest crabs and the freshest maliputo from Taal.”

See the freshest seafoods

“As you know, my dad was an avid fisherman; he loved to fish,” Pia relates. “He would take us along on his fishing expeditions and we would catch sailfish and marlin and then release them. For Kamayan, he said what was important was to get back all the seafood dishes, because if you look at all the Filipino seafood restaurants, their seafood offerings are very limited or not much, and our country is known for its seafood.”

Mara Villavicencio adds, “So, to celebrate the Kamayan legacy, we’re bringing back some of the seafood specialties of the old Kamayan, like the yamang dagat and the mixed seafood.”

Lots and lots of the freshest catch from the sea you will ever see!

“And the Kamayan dishes we knew as children,” describes Pia, who, with her siblings Veejay, twins Mara and Cara, grew up amid the dazzling aroma of good food cooking in Kamayan’s gigantic kitchen. 

A hands-down winner: Kamayan celebrates the legacy of buffet king Vicvic Villavicencio. Marking Kamayan’s 42nd year are the Villavicencio children Mara, Pia, Cara, Victoria, Veejay, and Bokie. Photos by Joey Mendoza

Mara fondly declares, “My old favorites were the sizzling bulalo steak, Kamayan seafood rice, and Kamayan lechon de leche.”

Says Pia, “We never actually had the big lechon. At the time when it was not yet popular, we even had the much smaller (and more flavorful) lechon de leche. Lechon was always in the Kamayan buffet, then we started introducing other variations, like lechon belly and Cebu lechon.”

She clarifies, “No, we’re not bringing back eating with your hands. But with our Kamayan catering, we can bring to your home all our Kamayan specialties, all the dishes you want, and you can eat with your hands. We can prepare a boodle fight for you in your home.”

Cara Villavicencio-Espinosa is delighted to share, “We brought a group of my daughter’s class to Kamayan Edsa as part of their field trip and let them eat with their hands. It was their first time to eat with their hands and they loved it! They said they were going to tell their parents to come just to eat with their hands.”

Around the Philippines in more than 80 dishes

Through the decades, Dads World Buffet has been giving us a taste of what the regions of the country (and parts of the world) have to offer. The Kamayan buffet, for instance, boasts assorted regional favorites, from the famous, make-no-bones-about-it bulalo of Batangas to the well-loved chicken inasal of Bacolod, all of which the Villavicencios have enjoyed on their regular family trips all over the country. 

“What we enjoyed most when we traveled with Dad — and what we miss most about him — was that he would educate us also, especially about food, which was always part of our itinerary. Food and fun! He was the type of father who’d skydive, ski with his children and the type of grandfather who’d ride the roller coaster with his grandchildren.”

What’s hot and new: Lechon sisig from lechon de leche

But of course, on those trips, whether here or abroad, the kids learned a lot more from their father on topics other than food. “Dad would make us experience a wide spectrum of accommodations, from resorts with no electricity, no water, and no beds, to the most luxurious hotels in the world,” Pia recounts. “He always told us that life is never just about the good life or the bad. But the bad life is never a bad life unless you choose it to be bad.”

On their yearly bonding trips abroad, Vicvic made sure he educated his kids on world cuisine. “That’s also the reason why there’s always a part of the world in our Dads buffet,” Pia points out. “Like our paella. On a recent trip to Barcelona with just the girls to celebrate Vicky’s graduation, we went to a paella place and Dad ordered four of the biggest paella. I said, ‘Dad, sobrang laki!’ But the paella was so flat, there was like a thin layer of rice (unlike our local paella which has a mountain of rice). That’s why he ordered four. But he said we can’t do that in a buffet restaurant because only a few people would be able to eat.”

Dads right! It’s the father of all buffets

Dads World Buffet is, inarguably, the father of all buffets. Pia confidently agrees, “We have the most number of choices and the price is the most reasonable (Monday to Friday lunch at P738; Monday to Friday dinner at P888, including bottomless soft drinks and juices). Our buffet on weekdays (which always includes lechon) is the same thing you’ll find on Saturdays and Sundays. And when our prices are dropped to a promo price, the quantity and quality of our food are not dropped. We aim to be among the leading buffet restaurants because we make sure our buffet gives you the best value for your money.”

On top of all these promos, Mara tells us, seniors can still use their 20-percent discount card. More, there’s no service charge, which Vicvic believed should be voluntary — customers shouldn’t have to pay for what they think is lousy service.

Pia elaborates, “With the volume of our guests, we’ve been able to keep our prices competitive, keep them very reasonable.”

Fresh start: Kamayan is bringing back all the seafood you’d love to see.

What Kamayan has also been able to keep through the years are its devoted chefs. The oldest in the kitchen has been with Kamayan since 39 years ago, almost when Vicvic’s wife Maridel gave birth to their twin daughters Mara and Cara.

Fact is, the Villavicencios encourage their chefs to be creative in the kitchen. “We just finished a festival where the dishes served were the new creations of our chefs,” says Pia. “So we have the main items that people look for, but half of the buffet are new creations of our chefs.”

Among the innovative new dishes at Dads is the lumpialabok, “our version of the palabok, but it’s inside a lumpia wrapper. So, when you eat it, there’s that crispy texture in your mouth,” says Mara.

Then there’s the lechon sisig from the lechon de leche. For dessert, there’s the ube flan cake, a leche flan with ube cake under. And then there’s the good old halo-halo, which gets reinvented with its new secret milk mixture that’s so flavorful you need not add sugar or syrup.

Care for Vicvic’s kare-kare?

If there’s any Kamayan signature dish Vicvic cared deeply for, it was the kare-kare. Pia notes, “My dad was very proud of our kare-kare; he said we had to serve the best kare-kare because it was hard to make. Even at home, we don’t make it often because it’s tedious.”

“Dad did not study how to cook; he was self-taught, he was always with his mom in the kitchen,” says Mara. “He loved to eat a lot of food; he ate anything!”

“But what he ingrained in all of us was his love for steak,” says Pia. “For him, steak was life.”

When Vicvic was not cooking at home, he simply enjoyed watching his children cook. This burning passion for cooking has rubbed off on the grandchildren. Veejay’s son Jaydee was only 10 when he started cooking. This now 13-year-old kitchen whiz can whip up a fantastic meal, from appetizer to main dish to chocolate soufflé for dessert.

“We miss our dad a lot,” Pia admits. “We have too many precious memories of him to mention here. But as my siblings would say, our dad is everywhere. And I think that whatever we do now, we’re guided by ‘what would he do?’”

I can almost imagine Vicvic giving his children a most loving two thumbs up!