NYT: What do we gain by eating with our hands? (feat. Naks)
For this photograph, T commissioned two artists to create miniatures inspired by foods often eaten by hand around the world, including, clockwise from top left, khobz (Moroccan bread); chicken adobo; Filipino pinakbet (vegetable stew); lumpia; daing na bangus (Filipino marinated milkfish); Indian curd rice and dosas; and an Ethiopian beyayenetu (combination platter). Photograph by Kyoko Hamada. Set design by Suzy Kim.
BEFORE THE $135-PER-PERSON tasting menu begins, you are gently invited to wash your hands. A sink stands along the wall. It’s important to make these ablutions publicly, to show everyone that your hands are clean, because at Naks, a Filipino restaurant that opened in Manhattan’s East Village in December, there are no forks on the tables — no eating implements of any kind.
You may hardly notice at first. It’s easy enough to down a shot of duck broth spiked with sour-bright bilimbi and spiced coconut-sap vinegar, delivered in an eggshell with the top broken off — the chef Eric Valdez’s winking take on the street food balut (fertilized duck egg) — and to daintily lift canapés like sea urchin on a pad of ground white corn small enough to tuck into a ring box, slippery sea cucumber held in place by firmer slices of its land-bound cousin and raw beef tenderloin sandwiched between ruffles of beef chicharron and doused with beef bile for a faint, anchoring bitterness. Later, whimsical alternatives to utensils appear: a chicken-and-shrimp meatball speared by the end of a whistle-clean bone so that it looks like a drumstick; grilled chicken skin, crispy and plush at once, on skewers that turn out to be twigs.