Story and photos by Mauricio Victa | Correspondent
NEXT time you pass by Ilocos Sur, be sure to stop by Narvacan town. It will be a heart-stopping visit, as the town proudly entices its residents and visitors alike to buy, eat and take home its signature product, bagnet.
Bagnet is deep-fried pork belly, fried till the skin crackles. It is eaten with rice as viand or eaten when drinking basi (wine fermented from sugarcane juice), beer or gin. It is a popular Ilocano creation, served also as topping to the popular Ilocano dish pinakbet.
Narvacan loves its bagnet so much that its mayor, Zuriel S. Zaragoza, has created a festival around it.
The Bagnet Festival is among the most overlooked festivals in the North. Many want it that way, because traffic is still manageable and bagnet can still be enjoyed with gusto.
Bagnet is very un-Ilocano, because Ilocanos love to eat vegetables.
Narvacan is the ground zero for bagnet. The festival is celebrated a week before Christmas, followed by Vigan’s Longganisa Festival the next month.
Bagnet is quintessentially Ilocano. It came from the word bagnetin, or “preserve the pork”. Before refrigerating, Ilocanos boil and fry their slabs of pork. Actually, bagnet is twice fried and in a hotter temperature, so it gets the characteristic blistery, crackling rind.
Bagnet vendor Mauro Corrales and his wife prepare 250 to 300 kilos every day (400 kilos on Sunday) and start the frying at midnight.
“The frying and refrying take three hours, and by 6 in the morning, we are already in the market,” Corrales said. There are 20 bagnet vendors at the Narvacan Public Market, so that’s about 6 tons of bagnet produced by the town every day.
Zaragoza said the towns people strictly adhere to the standard of cooking their bagnet.
“The pork has to be fresh and not frozen. Otherwise, we cancel your license,” he said. Zaragoza said they are developing the Narvacan brand for their bagnet. They also got funding from the Department of Trade and Industry for their packaging. They have started marketing not only in the North but in Manila, and pretty soon in Hawaii and other Ilocano enclaves.
The Bagnet Festival is a great attraction. Dance troupes from neighboring towns join the parade, which starts at the church and ends in the mall.
The street dances are among the best I’ve seen in Northern Luzon. The atmosphere is homey and more relaxed, maybe because it is still less crowded. Tourists are encouraged to join in the dancing, probably to burn the calories from this sinful food.
Narvacan also wants to be known as the extreme sports mecca in the Ilocos region. So it is offering unconventional sports activities, like paragliding, climbing, all-weather racing, ziplining and downslope bike racing.
Image credits: Mauricio Victa