Consider the ube

Native Filipino ube on the world’s table is undoubtedly a star.

Ube’s huge popularity in global recipes, kitchens, and menus is perhaps comparable to Alex Eala’s meteoric rise in women’s tennis, with her mauve outfits paying homage not only to her Filipino identity but to ube halaya’s vividly sensual amethyst hues that familiarly sits atop the halo-halo’s riot of colors that transport many back to bygone memories of past summers.

Personal and cultural memories, paraphrasing food writer Betty Fussell, are so a part of eating and speaking that to simply name a food is to invoke the lifetime of a person and a culture.

So, talking about a single food like ube “is also about place and time and occasion and memory, just as it is about politics and economics and trade and war and religion and ceremony,” and sports.

Since food is connected to everything, the humble ube is more than just a worldwide food trend.

“It’s a powerful connection to our culture, heritage storytelling through food,” a Fil-American restaurateur recently told a news site.

Ube is a form of identity then. “There are certain ingredients of any cuisine that are a big part of the identity of that cuisine, and ube is that for the Philippines,” says American professor James Zarsadiaz on the Americans’ embrace of ube.

Indeed, ube has gone viral in the US for its purple color and mild, endlessly adaptable flavor.

“From cocktails and lattes to ice cream,” says a news report, “ube appeared on three times as many US restaurant menus in 2025 as it did in 2021.”

In 2019, Trader Joe’s released an ube ice cream to great fanfare and has since expanded its lineup of ube products, including pancake mix and shortbread cookies, which sell out rapidly.

Starbucks last March added iced ube coconut macchiatos across the US, while Taiwanese boba chain Xing Fu Tang has a seasonal lineup of ube drinks, even as our homegrown Jollibee sells a popular ube-filled pie.

But even as ube summons many a Filipino expatriate’s nostalgic connection to his or her original culture and is, for foreign palates, their first taste of Filipino food, many worry ube’s novelty and worldwide fame may become detached from its Filipino roots and its place in Filipino cuisine.

In food, ube’s striking color certainly enchants the Instagram crowd. But many, including Filipinos, hardly notice that vibrant colors have always accompanied Filipino food, says food writer Rowena Dumlao-Giardina, who observes that while many savory Filipino dishes look brown, Filipino sweets often come in eclectic tropical colors.

Mango’s flashy yellow, for example, brightly adds tropical sunniness to halo-halo, while juice from pandan leaves, when blended and strained, gives a delicate pale green to various Filipino desserts. Ube, of course, makes for the cherry sapin-sapin and puto bumbong, strongly reminiscent of Christmas.

Nonetheless, as ube leads in global appetites for healthier and more visually striking food, the healthy antioxidant starchy tuber’s success stumbles on a different issue: Filipino farmers struggling to keep up with demand.

Ube exports are bursting out, says the Department of Agriculture. But climate change and frequent typhoons are hitting Central Visayas, where a third of the Philippine ube — including Bohol’s famed deeply purple “kinampay” --- is grown.

Other ube-producing regions are also straining. “Ube is a homegrown backyard crop,” Sister Guadalupe Bautista of Baguio’s renowned Good Shepherd Convent and its wished-for bottled ube halaya told a reporter. “We don’t have plantations, unlike pineapple or rice, where everybody’s planting hectares and hectares of ube.”