916.8-kilo tossed salad feeds 4,861 Baguio reside

BAGUIO CITY — The city’s hoteliers were ecstatic yesterday, claiming they beat an existing world record for the biggest salad, after whipping up a 916.8-kilo tossed salad which 4,861 ticket-holding city residents partook of.

"We beat the Utah record fourfold," exclaimed Jeannine Chan, president of the Baguio Association of Hotels and Inns (BAHAI), at the end of the event.

On Sept. 14 last year, a group in Utah, USA came up with the world’s biggest Caesar’s salad which fed some 1,000 people. There was no word though how much salad was served to each of them.

Braving the intermittent rain, some 5,000 city folk lined up for hours at the Baguio Convention Center to get a taste of the tossed salad — at 200 grams each. Organizers planned a 3 p.m. cutoff but people still lined up.

The convention center’s doors opened at 9 a.m. and after a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony, 1,488 bowls of salad — topped with Thousand Island dressing and even parmesan cheese for those who liked it — were given out to ticket holders starting at 11:30 a.m.

Some 900.3 kilos of vegetables were chopped up and placed in two giant galvanized-iron bowls made by a local engineer who sells roofing materials.

By noon, the remaining ticket-holders had to wait for their servings because the salad dressing ran out, what with people asking for double servings.

It took 15 minutes for BAHAI members, to whip up more dressing. By 1:15 p.m., a total of 3,307 bowls of salad were distributed.

By 2:35 p.m., distribution was again stalled after plates and parmesan cheese ran out, prompting BAHAI officers to immediately source them from member-hotels.

Fifteen minutes before the scheduled 3 p.m. cutoff, people were still lining up but were finally allowed in to partake of the salad tossed by chef Abelardo Quiambao whom BAHAI had contracted to do the job.

In the end, a total of 4,861 ticket-holders were recorded to have partaken of the salad, thanks to the help of the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Purificacion Molintas, Cordillera tourism director, said it was BAHAI vice president Gerry Beltran who thought of coming up with a "biggest something" project utilizing the region’s upland vegetables.

It was in late-June or early-July this year when the idea of a biggest and heaviest salad was hatched, and the BAHAI officers lost no time in preparing for the event.

The project was presented to the Baguio Tourism Council headed by Bong Tabora which, in turn, included it as one of the highlights of the Baguio City Day celebration.