‘HAIL TO THE QUEEN’ | One of the “lechon” (roasted pig) displayed along Baywalk Boulevard in Pagadian City for its third Lechon Festival on June 18, 2023, has a crown made of vegetables as local roasters try to outdo each other to make their roasted pigs attractive. (Photo by LEAH AGONOY / Inquirer Mindanao)
PAGADIAN CITY, Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines — Some of them are striped like zebras while others look like dragons, wearing calamansi as necklaces and crowned by onions. Others, the so-called “lechon de avatar,” have bellies full of crabs, prawns, lobsters, and chicken.
These mouthwatering “lechon” (roasted pig) dishes are displayed along Baywalk Boulevard here as the city opens its third Lechon Festival on Sunday, as part of the weeklong festivities to celebrate the city’s 54th Charter Day on June 21.
Priscilla Ann Co, city tourism officer, said they included the Lechon Festival for the third time in the annual Charter Day festivities to boost the local lechon industry’s chance to compete with other cities in the country also known for their lechon.
Big boost
Pagadian City, the capital of Zamboanga del Sur, in the past largely remained quiet about its thriving lechon industry, which is patronized not just by locals but visitors as well, who would bring them home as “pasalubong” (gift) because of its unique taste created by stuffing the pig’s belly with seafood, chicken and plenty of other mouthwatering concoctions.
Co decided it was high time to promote the local industry and include it in the tourism package of the Zamboanga Peninsula region, as Baywalk Boulevard showcased 30 different styles and tastes of lechon, with local roasters inventing and making their own twists to the country’s most loved fiesta delicacy.
Alma Espinosa Javier, who operates the city’s oldest lechon house Alpa Maasinhon Lechon Haus, said that this year, they featured the spicy lechon chicharron, which is stuffed with mixed seafood like crabs, shrimps, and lobsters in its belly. Javier’s lechon house in Gatas District here has been operating in the last 40 years.
Javier said the yearly Lechon Festival had really been a big boost to their business, as they got orders from cities like Manila and Cebu, which were delivered via air cargo, while other customers ordered them as pasalubong for friends in Japan, Jordan, Singapore, and other countries and had these frozen before their flights.
Co said local officials wanted Pagadian City to be known as a place with the most delectable lechon, not only as the “little Hong Kong of the south,” (as promoted by the city government) or as a good source of “bulad” (dried fish).