It’s Not Plain Manila

Imagine all sorts of delicious, unusual food spread before you, more than you could possibly eat, for as little as $6.99, depending on the time and the day of the week (the most you could possibly pay is $10.99). That’s Kainan Kamayan, a Philippine restaurant in Glendale.

The buffet--there’s no a la carte service--is similar to what you’d get at a provincial fiesta in the Philippines. On weekends, you can even taste that characteristic fiesta dish lechon, a whole suckling pig. The rest of the week, lechon meat might appear in vinegar sauce (paksiw na lechon) or fried in a wok (lechon kawali).

Spain ruled the Philippines for more than 300 years, so you’ll see many dishes with Spanish names, among them: pochero (beef and vegetables stewed in a sweetened tomato sauce), mechado (beef short ribs in tomato sauce with red and green peppers) and kalderetang karne (a dark, glistening beef stew that tastes like American beef stew with fattier meat). Also, the menudo is not tripe soup but cubed pork and pork liver in tomato sauce with raisins, potatoes and bell peppers.

I went back for seconds of the barbecued pork (inihaw na baboy), which is grilled until blackened and enjoyably chewy. Binagoongang baboy is definitely exotic. The pork is seasoned with a strong fermented shrimp paste (bagoong) and sugar.

And of course there is pork adobo, often called the Philippine national dish; it’s seasoned with garlic, soy sauce and vinegar and appears both as a main dish and in adobo rice. By comparison, kare-kare (oxtails and vegetables in pale, creamy peanut sauce) is downright bland--unless you season it, as Filipinos do, with bagoong.

Clearly, the selection is heavy on red meat, but there are plenty of non-meat options. It was good anyway. The fried squid rings are seriously chewy--which is how I like them--and squid in coconut sauce (pusit sa gata) is delightful. The garlic bangus I had one night was just fine, though a Filipina friend said it was not real bangus (milkfish) but tilapia. Chicken with ginger and onions and lemon grass chicken appear regularly.

Two of my favorite dishes are vegetables. Laing sa gata, taro leaves cooked with chiles and coconut milk, is a spicy take on creamed spinach with a faint bitter accent. I couldn’t resist a third helping. The other, kilawing puso ng saging, shredded banana blossoms cooked with shrimp and ground pork, gives the impression of mild sauerkraut mixed with shrimp and little clumps of ground pork.

There are always two styles of rice, plain rice and a rice seasoned with something--say, adobo or loads of garlic. There is always pancit bihon, too, a Philippine-style chow mein made with slim rice noodles.

Big white soup mugs allow an ample serving of the soup of the day, which is often the sour sinigang or perhaps sinampalukang, which is soured with tamarind. One day, it was big green mussels floating in a broth that seemed to be just salted water.

For dessert, you go to the make-your-own halo-halo bar. The fixings, which vary from day to day, might include small sweetened red beans, large pale beans in syrup, corn kernels, ube paste (made from a purple yam), bright red cubes of nata de coco (coconut gel), sliced peaches, fruit cocktail and jackfruit. You spoon this into a glass and top it off with shaved ice and canned milk. After mopping up a spill caused by overloading, I decided that the big soup mugs make safer containers.

Kainan Kamayan is a bright, fresh little place, as green as the tropics. Cooks were brought from Manila to make the food as authentic as possible, and signs on the buffet identify each dish. The selection changes regularly, so there is always something different to try.

In Tagalog, kainan means an eating place and kamayan means hands--in other words, a restaurant where you eat with the hands. I haven’t observed any manual eating at Kainan Kamayan, which supplies forks and big spoons, but the name conjures up pleasant images of provincial villages where the old custom was to eat in this fashion.

BE THERE

Kainan Kamayan Restaurant, 113 N. Maryland Ave., Glendale, in the Exchange Building. (The restaurant opens onto a walkway inside the complex, not onto the street.) (818) 507-9197. Lunch daily from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; Dinner, 6 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, 5 to 9 p.m. on Sundays. Major credit cards accepted. Beer and wine. Validated parking for two hours in the Exchange parking garage, with entrances on Maryland. Dinner for two, food only, $14 to $22.

What to get: Kaldaretang karne, inihaw na baboy, binagoongang baboy, laing sa gata, kilawing puso ng saging, halo-halo.