Philippines’ Ube is now a food trend in New York

Also known as a purple yam, this popular Filipino root crop is currently making waves abroad.

UBE ICE CREAM. Philippine rootcrop ube is now a food trend in New York. Image by Marcos Torres, grabbed from Soft Swerve’s Facebook page

Taking over New York with its luscious purple yam flavor is Philippines’ Ube (pronounced as oo-beh), a root crop vegetable that is dubbed as 2016’s Most Photographed Food. According to American website Insider, one of the first restaurants in New York City to offer Ube is Manila Social Club in Williamsburg, New York which serves donuts topped with ube frosting. As for The Guardian, ube is “somewhere between pistachio, white chocolate, vanilla, and coconut.”

Now, the Ube trend has become more popular with Soft Swerve’s soft-served ice cream, a new ice cream shop in the city. The ube-flavored ice cream has gained a following, especially in social media reviews of the restaurant. According to Ed Carter, a Soft Swerve customer, “The ube ice cream was the bomb and the chocolate waffle cone, 10/10.”

Known as a new food trend in social media, having over 140,000 search results on Instagram, Ube is definitely the next food trend from the Philippines to make it big all over the world.

Source: The Insider, The Guardian