IF you’re from Alcala Pangasinan in the Philippines, or even if you’re not but have a bloodline or affiliation with this town, and proud of it, join a barbecue grill event there on April 29 at 5 p.m. and put Alcala in the Guinness Book of World Records.  

This rustic and scenic town by the great Agno River in northern Philippineshas served notice it will set up a three-kilometer barbecue grill party starting from the poblacion and extending to six other barangays on that date to attempt to capture the record for Longest Grill.

According to Mayor Manuel N. Collado who is now marshalling manpower and local resources to stage the event, he was informed that the current record for this stands at only 30 meters. The Alcala event will stretch up to 150 meters, he said.

If it manages to come up with the three-kilometer long grill party, the town will have overshadowed Dagupan City’s 2.2 kilometer long barbecue grill set last year (that officially has yet to be acknowledged and recorded by Guinness however), even as it will have established another major tourism event in that part of the province.

Collado said some 4,000 kilos of pork and hundreds of bangus (milkfish) will be grilled during the highlight hour on prepared iron grills that will be sold to interested partygoers and visitors at $100 each. The event hopes to raise funds for various development projects of the town administration that are now either ongoing or in the pipeline.

The very encouraging part, according to Collado, is that 900 of the 1,000 grills they ordered from the contractor have been sold out or reserved, mostly by Alcalenians abroad, this early.

On the actual barbecue party event, some 20,000 people are expected to troop to Alcala “to make merry with us and we will only be too happy to welcome them all,” the beaming mayor said.