BOLANTE, JOANN S.

BSMA

LA LOMA LECHON CAPITAL OF MANILA

THE Quezon City government has an ongoing plan to redevelop La Loma, the country’s
lechon capital, to make it conducive to tourists.
Mayor Herbert Bautista on Tuesday called on owners of lechon houses to cooperate with
the city government in the development of the area.
Bautista said he wants to address several concerns in the area with a single stroke, “and
this entails the full cooperation of the community.”
A sewerage treatment plant in La Loma will be put up, he added. District 1 Rep. Vincent
Crisologo will fund the plant construction, the mayor said.
According to Crisologo, there is a need to hold monthly street parties in La Loma
featuring the famous roast suckling pig to further stake the district’s claim as the
“lechon capital of the Philippines.”
“I call on the Quezon City Tourism department to study the possibility of making the
lechon festival a monthly affair. We can close a portion of N.S Amoranto Street and hold
a street party once a month. This would attract more visitors and further promote our
district as the country’s Lechon Capital,” he said.
On Sunday, Quezon City marked the 10th lechon festival in La Loma.
Anthony Bourdain declared the Filipino lechon as the “best pork dish ever”, and many
towns in the country have made it the centerpiece of their religious fiestas. But La Loma
in Quezon City, with its reputation as a historic place, maintains its claim as Lechon
Capital of the Philippines, that it was a place made famous by this iconic delicacy.
Today, the annual La Loma Lechon Festival (celebrated every third Sunday of May)
reaffirms that belief, essentially a summer thanksgiving festival that pays tribute to its
patron saint, the Our Lady of Salvation (Nuestra Señora de Salvacion). While its claims
of the oldest lechon festival in the country may be contested by other towns like
Balayan, Borongan, Cebu and Iloilo, there is no question that the pork dish has
ultimately defined La Loma’s tasty reputation.

Historic Hub

Before it was known as Lechon Capital, La Loma was literally a vast rolling hill of rice
fields, hence it was named Paang Bundok or “foot of the mountain”, the current name of
the barangay where La Loma belongs.
It was also known as the home to the oldest existing public cemetery in Manila, the
Campo Santo de La Loma, built in 1884 with an area of 54 hectares. Some its famous
‘interns’ include revolutionaries Felipe and Marcela Agoncillo; Supreme Court justices
Cayetano Arellano, Victorino Mapa and Ignacio Villamor; Girls Scouts of the Philippines
founder and World War II heroine Josefa Llanes Escoda; and Centro Escolar University
founder Librada Avelino.
La Loma was also the battlefield of the Philippine-American War during the turn of the
20th century. General Antonio Luna’s aide-de-camp, Jose Torres Bugallon, who helped
organize the first Philippine Army, died during the defense of the area against the
American forces and was posthumously declared Hero of the Battle of La Loma.
In 1903, Don Tomas Guison built what is probably the biggest and the oldest existing
cockpit arena in the Philippines in the area, along Calavite Street. To this day, cockfights
bring the arena to life during Sundays and holidays, and indirectly, it has fathered what
would be La Loma’s most lucrative industry: the Lechon.

Festive Origins
According to Ping Ping Native Lechon’s owner William Manugar Chua, the cockpit was a
place to celebrate life, as sabong or cockfighting remains a favorite pastime of Filipinos.

“In the 1950s, after the war, La Loma Cockpit was the place where you can be seen if
you were a veteran sabongero,” he explains. Sabong or cockfight was the preferred
game of betting, and victorious gamefowl owners and bettors who celebrate their
winnings usually ended up eating and drinking after a long day at the cockpit.

Tomas De Los Reyes, whose name would be synonymous to the famous dish, was one of
those enterprising visionaries who saw the potential of the lechon. A meat vendor who
sources pigs from as far as Quezon and Isabela, he would sell his meat in the
neighboring markets of Blumentritt and Divisoria. Coincidentally and auspiciously, his
house was strategically located in front of the La Loma Cockpit Arena.

“Pagkatapos ng sabong, matalo o manalo, dumidiretso sila sa harap ng bahay ng

biyenan ko (After the cockfight, win or lose, they proceed to my father-in-law’s house),”
Cora Delos Reyes narrates. “Iyong mga natalo, ipapaluto iyong namatay nilang
panabong para gawing pulutan. Pero kapag nanalo sila, gusto nila ng mas magarbo gaya
ng inihaw na baboy (Losers asked him to cook the dead fowl as finger food. But for
winners, of course they wanted something more extravagant, like roast pork).”
His lechon became so famous it went beyond its reputation as dish of choice by
purveyors of the cockpit.

It was in 1954 that Mang Tomas became the very first lechonero (pig roaster) of La
Loma and jumpstarted the lechon industry by opening the first lechon restaurant in La
Loma. He became so famous he was dubbed the “Colonel Sanders” of the lechon
industry.

“All of a sudden, the lechon was no longer just a dish for sabongeros,” Chua declares.
“People from all walks of life started to come to La Loma to sample the lechon.”

One famous anecdote was that in 1955, President Ramon Magsaysay came to Mang
Tomas’s carinderia-style eatery unannounced, rolled up his sleeves and ate lechon with
his bare hands, dipping it into the dark sweet liver sauce that would later be equally
iconic and named in his honor, the Sarsa ni Mang Tomas.
By the 1960s, other lechoneros would follow suit – William Chua (who is now barangay
captain of Paang Bundok) and his brothers started Ping Ping’s Native Lechon (named
after their only sister); Serafin and Antonina Cesario opened Mila’s Lechon (named after
their daughter); the Ferreros clan with Monchie’s, Ryan’s and Lito’s.
In the 1990s, the lechoneros of Paang Bundok formed their own group, the La Loma
Lechoneros Association.
“The goal of the association is to safeguard the quality of the lechon being produced,”
Chua explains.
In the year 2000, Monchie Ferreros (who was president of the association at that time)
started the very first Parada ng Mga Lechon. Then Mayor Feliciano Belmonte, Jr.
supported the initiative and declared La Loma the official Lechon Capital of the
Philippines.

Fervent Support
The Quezon City government is equally supportive of the initiatives of the lechoneros’
group. Mayor Herbert Bautista has instructed to classify La Loma as a major tourist
destination. Despite the challenges, plans to have a centralized slaughterhouse for
improved sanitation and increased tourist arrivals are underway.
This is supported by the District 1 councilors of Quezon City where La Loma belongs.
Councilor Onyx Crisologo envisions the La Loma Lechon district to be
“clean, pleasing to the eyes [and] tourist-friendly, where visitors can appreciate its
heritage and enjoy its food. If there is a bus full of tourists, we have to be prepared to
walk them around, to give them a view of how our lechon is prepared. It will give them
the impression that aside from being good cooks, the people of Quezon City are
enterprising as well.”

District 1 Representative Vincent ‘Bingbong’ Crisologo likewise agrees with the tourism
aspect, suggesting that La Loma “can be turned into something like Paris, where people
can enjoy lechon dinners al-fresco style. Restaurants can bring their tables outside, then
there will be entertainment and activities. We can start one Sunday each month, then let
us see from there. People will flock to La Loma because of this.”
With continued improvements in infrastructure and support from the Quezon City local
government, the La Loma Lechoneros Association Inc. said these would help increase
sales. According to its president Mr. Chua, lechon sales are presently estimated to be
around 200 on ordinary days, with brisker sales during holidays, especially during
Christmas and New Year, where more than a thousand whole lechon were sold last year.

Lechon Beyond
Now on its 17th year, the La Loma Lechon Festival has paved the way for the lechon to
go beyond its usual role as the piece de resistance in any Filipino feast. The lechoneros
dress up the lechon, named after famous personalities (Manny Pork-quiao or Piggy
Wurtzbach easily come to mind), and parade it in the streets of Retiro and Calavite,
capped with a boodle fight for guests.

“It was lechon that has become a source of respectable livelihood for us here in La
Loma,” Chua says. “It is our source of pride that many Filipino celebrations would not be
complete without the lechon.”

With that said, let us all pinch into the lechon’s crispy skin, bite into its soft juicy
fragrant meat, and let its oil graze your lips and cheeks. Life is a celebration, after all,
and the taste of lechon reigns supreme in the hearts and tummies of Filipinos.