Bacolod Grill · Annatto-Marinated Chicken
Chicken Inasal
Photo: Obsidian Soul / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
One of the earliest written records of a Filipino grilled-chicken dish dates back to an 1895 photo book published in Madrid — decades before Bacolod's Chicken Alley made the dish famous.
Chicken is marinated in calamansi juice, vinegar, and annatto oil until it turns deep orange-red, then grilled over hot coals while basted with more marinade, giving the skin a tangy, smoky char. Bacolod's Cuadra Street — nicknamed Chicken Alley — built its reputation on rows of grills doing exactly this since the 1970s.
Why it's made this way: Banoy Velez of Oton, Iloilo is credited with bringing the dish to Bacolod in 1946, and the annatto-and-vinegar marinade became so tied to the city's identity that Bacolod formally declared it a local cultural property in a 2022 city ordinance.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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