Customers dine al fresco at BCI Tita Boots Chicken Inasal

Part I: Finding Bacolod Chicken Inasal in Silang, Cavite

“A whim, an indulgence” is how Tita Boots Iglesias describes her restaurant, BCI Tita Boots Chicken Inasal, which officially opened in May this year.

“I really don’t want to be in the food business,” she relates. “I just wanted to do something productive.”

Tita Boots has been in the furniture business for 28 years: Recuerdos Crafts, an export-oriented shop owned by her family, offers antiques, reproductions, and leather-upholstered pieces.

From furniture to food
The journey from the furniture business to food spans three decades and traces its origin to Bacolod City, where Recuerdos started in 1979. The shop dealt mainly with antiques and excavated pieces from Negros, Bohol, Palawan, and Iloilo.

A decade later, Recuerdos opened its first shop in Ermita. At the time it was called Recuerdos de Bacolod. This was when Tita Boots made her first export deal and started shipping furniture to the US and Italy, their biggest market to date.

They would later open another branch in a mall, but after maintaining it for seven years and finding the overhead costs too impractical, they looked for a showroom and found the perfect lot in Silang, Cavite.

You can enjoy a cup of brewed coffee while relaxing leisurely on this bench

On this one-hectare lot stands two showrooms: One holds living, dining, and bedroom furniture pieces, mostly in mahogany and cow leather, for export. The other has furnishings and bric-a-brac that walk-in customers can buy.

What the clients want
Tita Boots has no MBA, but she has a solid, practical business philosophy: “Give what the customers want.”

“Our clients have been asking us to make use of the lot and put up a restaurant, because they say they don’t want to drive 30 minutes away to Tagaytay just to eat when all they want to do is look at the furniture,” says Cecile Mendoza, Tita Boots’ niece who manages both the restaurant and the furniture shop.

The restaurant was also a good excuse to display the wooden dining and living room furniture pieces that Recuerdos manufactures in its 1,000-square-meter workshop in Salawag, Dasmarinas, Cavite.

Customers can just walk into the 100-person-capacity function room, and if they see a living or dining room set they want to buy, Recuerdos will pack it up for them to take home.

“My customers wonder why we put out new furniture sets each time,” Cecile laughs.

Secrets revealed
Each morning Tita Boots goes to Tagaytay to buy fresh vegetables and ingredients for the bulalo. The chicken is bought locally, usually 20 whole pieces a day. More than that, and the entire Recuerdos staff will have to stuff themselves with chicken inasal for dinner.

“We never keep anything frozen,” Cecile says. “We never buy more than what we can consume in a day.”

Ask Cecile and Tita Boots how the early months were, and they will tell you of days when all they ate was chicken inasal every night, because they had no choice but to finish it.

“There were times when all we earned for the day was P400, but we were happy anyway,” Tita Boots remembers.

Business has picked up since then, and Cecile has even advertised a live band on Saturday nights. If you’re in the mood for some gourmet coffee, there’s a cappuccino maker on standby. Cecile brings in Batangas beans, blending its local taste with Italian syrup.

Tita Boots, for all its worth, enjoys being on her feet. Cecile quips, “I tell her, ‘You’ll grow old fast if you have nothing to do!’” Well-meaning friends and customers have been asking Tita Boots to have the inasalan franchised, which is something both women are not open to.

“If we do that, I’ll have to wake up at 4 a.m. to prepare the chicken, and I don’t want to do that. It’s not healthy anymore!” Tita Boots says.

If you’re for cuisine that tastes like home c0oking, Tita Boots Inasal is for you. Don’t come alone. The dishes come in family sizes (bulalo at P450, sinigang na tanguige or sugpo at P400, chopsuey at P250–the third, crunchy and fresh, is not to be missed) and are great for sharing.

Generous portions of chicken hita (thigh), or pecho (breast) can be had for P78. The bachoy, at P78, can be shared by more than two people.

Don’t forget to try the mixed-vegetables atsara, only P20 a dish: It complements the inasal really well. Perhaps next month Cecile might have it bottled, and you can get some for Christmas (can you guess who asked for it?).

After all that eating, you might want to walk around and check out the Recuerdos showrooms. They have awesome designs that are truly Pinoy and world-class.

Next week: Furniture designs from Recuerdos