The joys of Filipino home cooking

• Name + address: Tamis Cafe, 374 Bank St.

• Type of food: Filipino

• Appetizers: $7-$25

• Mains:$15.50-$43

• Diet: Meat, Seafood

• Wheelchair accessibility: Yes. Washrooms downstairs.

• LCBO Licensed: Yes

• Website: Tamis Cafe

In the realm of our senses, taste and most certainly smell, are two of the most powerful evocatively strong sense memories. That’s how it was when I went for a little Filipino culinary journey but came away with food memories of my German upbringing. Curious.

One thing I do know about Filipino culture is that this is a society that values family.  I saw how strong those bonds could be decades ago in Germany. My uncle had married a Filipino woman and his modest apartment  was abruptly party food central with family members dropping in and out every day of the week.

So you’ll be pleased to learn that the portions at Tamis Cafe are most definitely for sharing and this in turn offers you the opportunity to try a few different things if you go in a group.

When I saw that the menu offered six spring rolls for $10 I had to ask if everything was made in house. Jiselle, the fab server and proud family member, assured me that it was. I can be forgiven for asking because I’ve had pre-made frozen supermarket rolls served to me and I’m just done with it.

These pork spring rolls have landed in my top five finest rolls from any restaurant available in Ottawa. Add these to the rolls served by Saigon Boy and Kitchen Maroo. They’re different from the aforementioned but equally delicious and made with care.

This is the type of meal commonly seen in brewhouses throughout Germany: marinated then deep-fried or oven roasted pork hock. Naturally a large beer with which to wash it down is de rigueur. At Tamis they deep fry their version and the crackling is superbly crisp coming away easily from the moist flesh below. Unfortunately, of the beers I preferred, they were out of all of them.

The pork hock is accompanied by a vinegared soy dipping sauce and a small side of papaya salad with shredded carrot. I first used the sauce to dip the crackling and it was a very good match. The papaya salad, likely because of the carrot, reminded me of the sweet carrot salad my mother would make as dessert and I did want more of it.

This hock comes in two sizes and I found the small to be sufficiently large that it would be easy to share. I also appreciated the rustic aesthetic of the presentation: the meat run-through with eating utensils. It reminded me of the Transylvania platter at Toronto’s famous Continental restaurant where a tower of steak, pork chops, sausages and chicken were pegged to a wooden board with two large daggers. It made you want to yell like a barbarian, “More mead!”

Then came the beef soup known as bulalo. It’s a classic dish of the Philippines and a large part of its appeal is the heady aroma and flavour of beef marrow. Without this you don’t have bulalo.

Where I come from, it was common to feed children bone marrow. In fact I had my very own small spoon made precisely for the purpose of extracting the stuff. While the bowl in front of me was missing the dollop of marrow normally in the bone, it still had an intoxicating aroma and reminded me of my grandmother's beef soup. The first taste confirmed my suspicions — this was homemade broth free of any adjuncts and nourishingly delicious.

Traditional bulalo comes with a wedge of cooked cabbage, scallions, potatoes and a piece of corn on the cob. The flavour comes largely from tougher off-cuts of beef such as shank and then the bone marrow itself. In this version there was also the addition of bok choy but the corn was not showing its best so far out of season.

A separate bowl with a mound of timbale molded rice is offered so that you can ladle the amount of soup you prefer over the rice.

There is seemingly one chronic problem at Tamis and that is, they always seem to be out of their famous pandan cake. I’ve had people tell me how much they love it but, sadly, I can’t speak to it. Every time I’ve stopped in, they’ve sold out.  One day…

Tamis gives you their best with clean, honest home-cooking making it one of my top dining destinations along downtown Bank St.