Chicken Inasal

Inasal is simply the Ilonggo word for grilled, but in practice it means one thing: chicken marinated in calamansi juice, vinegar, lemongrass, garlic and ginger, skewered in bamboo and grilled over charcoal while being basted with annatto oil, which gives it the orange colour and a faint peppery note. It is ordered by cut - pecho for breast, paa for leg, and the parts that Bacolod takes more seriously than the meat: baticolon, gizzard; atay, liver; corazon, heart; and the wonderfully named pakpak and isol, the wings and the tail. It comes with garlic rice, a dipping bowl mixed at the table from vinegar, soy, calamansi and chilli, and a jar of chicken oil to spoon over the rice, which is the part that ruins you for the chain versions. Manokan Country, a strip of open-sided stalls near the Bacolod bay, is where to eat it, by hand, from a plate lined with banana leaf.

What you actually see

• The charcoal grills - skewers basted with annatto oil.
• The cuts - breast, leg, gizzard, liver, heart, wings and tail.
• The dipping bowl - mixed at the table from vinegar and soy.
• Manokan Country - the strip of stalls in Bacolod.

When to go

Year-round; lunch and dinner. Manokan Country runs from midday into the evening and is busiest at both peaks.

Honest expectations

The stalls are open-sided, plastic-stool places - go for the food, not the setting. Eating by hand is normal and cutlery may need asking for. Chain versions nationwide are a considerably paler thing.

Nearby

Silay's heritage houses are north of Bacolod; the Angry Christ church at Victorias is an hour up the coast.