Tanam - Somerville

A lovey surprise. Innovative concept restaurant serving Filipino food (only Filipino restaurant in Boston). I love eating with my hands and Tanam encourages that. The food menu is small but every item on it is exteremely high quality. The maticulously crafted food and its deep complex flavors makes sense when you learn that Chef Ellie, a former neuroscientist with a Science publication. Make sure you try everything with birds eye chilli sauce. The cocktails are out of this world. Try the Death and the Filipino version of the Pico sour. We went for the bar menu and can't wait to try their full sit down family style menu.

If you are wanting to have a fun and unique food/social experience with your friends, then reserving seats at the Kamayan at Tanam won 't let you down. Before I get into the Kamayan, I will warn you that this restaurant is SMALL. It can 't be more than 100 square feet. They don 't have a bathroom, but there is one available nearby. You have the option to eat outside in a cute little courtyard though if you aren 't doing the Kamayan. The Kamayan is a Filipino family style feast where you sit around a table laid with banana tree leaves under a variety of foods and eat with your hands! Tanam hosts these every Wednesday at 5pm, 7pm and 9pm. There are 10 seats, and they will sell all 10 even if you have a party of 8 (like us). It 's not awkward though, since it 's pretty fun for everyone and easy to get along. It 's house policy for everyone to wash their hands before sitting. For the feast, the staff will artfully lay out rice in a snake pattern, with 4 lobsters, fish, fried pork belly, fried chicken wings, muscles, green veggies, pineapple, sauces and more. Before the feast begins, the staff will teach you how to eat with your hands, which is unexpectedly difficult when trying to dip rice clumps in sauce. Then, you gorge yourself for 2 hours until you 're in a sweet and salty food coma. They have a small drink selection, but wow they have some really refreshing unique cocktails. Get the ube sour at least. The biggest downside of the Kamayan is how expensive it is. The seats are $70 each, and go to $89 if you include tax and tip. This doesn 't include drinks, which are pricey. It 's a lot of food, and it tastes good, but it of course isn 't as efficient as hitting up a cheap Chinese buffet for food per dollar spent. However, it 's a lot more social than a buffet or any other kind of 'all you can eat ' place, so it 's hard to put a price on that. Probably not $89 though. Still, I don 't have any regrets reserving the seats. It was a good, fun experience that everyone was happy with. We were the second group to finish the entire feast (mostly because of my personal efforts to make it so), and I was completely stuffed and happy. It was definitely a memorable experience in a good way, and I recommend everyone to try it at least once.

Let’s start with the odd location of the sink- which was not conveniently accessible to guests as it is Let’s start with the location of the sink which should be conveniently accessible to guests. The room was crowded and one can barely go to the sink when everybody’s seated. Then this picture is how the food was presented, nothing like the pictures that we saw from previous reviews that seem to have abundance of food. The milkfish/ “daing” and eggplant was undercooked, beef skewers were dry and tough, underwhelmed w mushroom sisig , “atsara” lacks flavor …. However, I was surprise with the flavorful duck adobo, and was happy with the crispy lechon kawali, pork spring rolls w an amazing sweet sauce !Tanam should reconsider their menu, step up with the presentation and lastly hire cheerful servers as customer service is equally important to make this place successful.

Attended piyestang Pinoy last weekend. very disappointed with servings. served lechon with no lech on sauce. dried chicken and pancit. ordered halo halo for 2 and was charged $33. Halo halo ingredients also not good. will be the first and last time at this restauran.

Really wanted to like this place but the service was horrible. While we were waiting 20+ minutes for the check, we could see the servers taking shots. Food was decent but not worth the price.