My mum didn’t let me eat chicken skin when I was growing up. But I’m making up for it with the chicken “skinato” sandwich from Inuman, the newly opened Filipino bar from the Askal team that’s right above the restaurant.

While chef John Rivera admits he’s not the first to make a sandwich using chicken skin, I think he might be the first to have perfected it – creating my new favourite bar snack in the process.

“The chicken skin gets really crispy because we bake it in the oven at a low roasting temperature, where it renders out the fat and the skin essentially fries in its own fat,” Rivera tells Broadsheet.

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It’s paired with a punchy salad of spring onions, lemongrass, coriander and sliced red chillis and a sauce made from roasted chicken jus, citron marmalade, sweet soy sauce and Kampot pepper, all sandwiched between two crust-free slices of “the best, top quality white sandwich bread from the closest supermarket,” (if you’re curious, the chef prefers Wonder White).

The flavours are inspired by the grilled Filipino dish chicken inato. “An old chef who used to work for me describes it as a bit like a Filipino teriyaki, with its sweet, salty, sour – that’s not really in teriyaki but it’s in all Filipino food – and smoky flavours”, Rivera says.

On a recent visit, I paired it with the beverage director Ralph Libo-on’s Sari-Sari Sparkle, a cocktail with lemongrass gin and hibiscus that also nods to Libo-on’s New Zealand upbringing with feijoa soda. The spicy and fatty-in-a-good-way sandwich went flawlessly with Libo-on’s tart cocktail – an excellent display of the pair’s perfectly in-sync vision for the bar.

What: Chicken ‘skinato’ sandwich
Price: $15
Where: Inuman, 167 Exhibition Street, Melbourne