BACOLOD CITY – The City Council has approved an ordinance declaring chicken inasal as an important cultural property here.
Authored by Councilor Em Ang, chairperson of the Committee on History, Culture, and Arts, the ordinance shall be known as the ‘’Chicken Inasal Cultural Property Rights Ordinance.’’
The ordinance stated that TasteAtlas.com, an online food critic website that ranks different dishes and cuisines around the world, ranked chicken inasal as fifth best among all the chicken dishes around the world.
The ordinance said the website described chicken inasal as a “unique Filipino grilled chicken dish which originated here and became the signature dish of the entire Visayas region.”
This city had been serving chicken inasal for a long time.
As early as the 1970s, Bacolod City already had “Chicken Alley,” predecessor to the renowned Manokan Country, a street lined with food stalls serving freshly charcoal-grilled chicken inasal, according to the ordinance.
To preserve and protect the rights of this city to chicken inasal as cultural property, the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) deemed it proper to pass the ordinance.
The Bacolod City Tourism Office (BCTO) will register chicken inasal with the Philippine Registry of Cultural Property under the National Commission for Culture and Arts as a “local important cultural property,” it added.
The City Council approved the measure on third and final reading during their regular session on Nov. 16.
Chicken inasal is a variant of the Filipino chicken dish ‘’lechon manok.’’
Marinated in a mixture of calamansi, pepper, coconut vinegar, and annatto or ‘’atsuete,’’chicken inasal is grilled over hot coals while basted with the marinade.