BACOLOD CHiCKEN HAUS: MYPASSION CAME TO LIFE

My passion for food and entertaining people has a lot to do why Bacolod Chicken Haus came into being. I grew up in a big family. My mother has 17 siblings and we were all living in a small town in the Southern part of Negros Occidental. Growing up, we’ve held so many parties for different occasions. With a close-knit family like mine, we always end up cooking for a bunch of people. Sharing good food with friends and family and the bond that you developed while doing it has kindled my passion for cooking. When I got here in the US some fourteen (14) years ago, I honed my cooking skills since nobody is around to do the cooking for me. I would always try new recipes and invite friends over to taste my new creations. It gives me satisfaction when friends rave on how good my food tastes. Many enthused, “Why don’t you open a restaurant?” Obviously, they say, I have the passion for cooking, the knowledge to run a business and supportive friends who are willing and would be paying customers. Key factors for success, I supposed. It’s time to cash in. I had this plan of opening a restaurant for a while now but with family and another business to run, time has been scarce to put the plan in place. Everything changed when my brother, Jean Paul, decided to leave London and migrate here in the US. They got settled two blocks away from my home and we started to coordinate our time and resources running our individual households. We share the same passion for food, and he also has interest in the restaurant business. We worked on our plans together. Initially, we found a place along Clark, suited for a restaurant business, in the same building where several Filipino establishments are located, right across Unimart Grocery, the big Filipino grocery store. We thought that customers will not be hard to find. It turned out, however, that the cost of opening a restaurant from scratch is so prohibitive and time-consuming that we had to abandon the idea and looked for an existing restaurant to take over. With God’s grace, we found one that. in two months time, we were able to open Bacolod Chicken Haus on Lincoln Avenue to the public. It has been our dream to share the food endemic to the place we grew up from. We spent most of our lives in Bacolod, the City of Smiles. We are proud of our city back home and we want to show our pride by making available to customers the things our City is known for. Bacolod City is renowned for its world-class Masskara Festival in the month of October. And you have not really been to Bacolod if you have not tasted its famed Chicken Inasal. Thus, we offered Chicken Inasal and featured the festive Masskara in our restaurant’s interior. Bacolod Chicken Haus has been a thrilling and rewarding experience so far. I hope it stays that way.