Not Just Your Ordinary Yam

Step aside, Taro, we’ve got a new player up to bat. The humble tuber we know as Ube

(OOH-beh), has glowed up overseas. It’s starting to make a name for itself aside from its

Filipino roots. Notable because of its natural deep purple color and its vanilla with a hint of

pistachio taste, it captures the hearts of almost anyone who tastes it. It’s not only pretty but

also high in antioxidants, too. With the boom of Filipino fusion restaurants abroad, Ube, has

proven that is more than just the opening act.

In the Philippines, it can grow virtually anywhere. It also isn’t hard to care for since it

is very tolerant to droughts and risks of pest infestation. We find ube in most Filipino

gatherings and on top of halo halo, another Filipino staple. We see it in the forms of ube

pandesal, haleya, polvoron, cheesecake, hopia, cupcakes, pastillas, otap, frappe, tart, ube

macapuno, ice cream, cakes and other pastries. There’s no such thing as too much ube. It’s

one of those dishes that is always present from early childhood until later on in life.

“People sometimes think it is food coloring,” said chef Björn DelaCruz of the Manila

Social Club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “There aren’t tons of purple foods, and this color is

so intense and deep. It is something people really like. It’s striking. When you cut ube open,

you see a color you can kinda get lost in. It’s natural marketing.”

As Filipino we love to cook as much as we love to eat. That’s no wonder why Filipino

cuisine is gaining notoriety with the rise of restaurants like Jeepney in New York, Bad Saint

in Washington D.C., and Lasa in Los Angeles. The Manila Social Club, one of the oldest

Filipino fusion restaurants based in New York, sells their famous 24k gold donuts that uses

ube as a mousse and then dusted with 24k gold dust for $100. Rumor has it, in 2016

customers had to wait 3 weeks to get their hands on it.

 “The best way I describe it, is that it tastes very similar to taro,” said Michael Tsang, a

co-founder of New York’s Asian-inspired Soft Swerve ice cream spot. “If you haven’t had

taro before, I’d say ube has a slightly nutty flavor and a hint of chestnut in it. It’s not really

recognizable for an American palate.”

Although we see how accepted ube is on our Instagram and Facebook feeds, this

wasn’t the case when Nicole Ponseca, the owner of two renowned Filipino restaurants in New

York, Maharlika and Jeepney, was growing up. Purple wasn’t exactly a staple in American

dinner tables. So when her mother brought it for a potluck at work, people made fun of it. It is

also starting to expand from being used only in Filipino fusion restaurants.

Chefs like Bjorn DelaCruz anticipate a palate shift coming soon. “We are not used to

Filipino food in the mainstream,“ he says. “Now that it is hitting the mainstream, we are

always trying to identify it. What I am starting to see is that ube is being identified as ube.”

Ube isn’t an exotic ingredient in the PH. However, when Filipinos go abroad, ube

brings them back home, in a way. “The problem with us Filipinos, and that includes all of

us,” says Amy Besa, owner of Purple Yam, “is that we really don’t know what we have.”

The scarcity of ube abroaad, makes it that much more important. That is why,

although it might be hard to find fresh ube, these Filipinos make an effort to include and

introduce it to their respective communities through its form as jam or powder. Most of these

restaurant owners are first and second generation immigrants meaning that they still hold

memories of their past or their parents’ past near and dear to their hearts but their upbringing

outside of the country allowed them to experiment with different ways to use ube.

Ube is a bridge that connects fellow immigrants together because it’s familiar--it’s the

taste of childhood and of their lives in the motherland.