Filipino restaurant Kasa and Kin in Soho, London, offers a selection of drinks and desserts made with ube, a Philippine root vegetable that has seen high demand from younger consumers due to its bright color and sweet taste.
Kasa and Kin
Longtime Filipino restaurateur Chris Joseph has been serving ube at his London establishments for the past decade, but interest in drinks and desserts made with the purple yam has increased over the past year.
Ube, a naturally sweet starchy vegetable grown by farmers in the Philippines, is the star of Joseph and his wife Rowena Romulo’s restaurant Kasa and Kin in Soho, founded in 2021.
“What was really coming out of the business was great from the beginning,” Joseph told CNBC in an interview.
Their previous restaurant, Romulo Café, which opened in 2016 and has since closed, was also known for its ube dishes. Kasa and Kin’s menu includes an ube latte, an ube martini, an ube tsunami cheesecake (with a flow of purple sauce), and even an ube cream cheese bread, among other creative items.
Ube has seen 230% growth on U.S. restaurant menus over the past four years, according to food and beverage analytics firm Datassentials.
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Joseph’s first customers were nostalgic Filipinos looking for a taste of home. “What we’ve seen now is people coming in and [being] curious about the ube, the people you don’t normally see. … They come in, they’ll look at the bakery case, they’ll get something ube, or the ube brownie, or the ube ice cream,” he said.
Over the past year, ube has transcended Filipino culture and entered the mainstream consciousness as coffee chains and restaurants search for the next viral food and drink craze.
Starbucks helped spark the trend in 2025 with limited-time offerings of the Ube Iced Coconut Latte and Ube Espresso Martini, expanding its Spring 2026 lineup to include an Ube Matcha Latte and an Ube Vanilla Macchiato. The American coffee chain Peet’s also launched an Iced Vanilla Latte with Ube Dream Top for the season.
Ube offerings have increased 230% on U.S. restaurant menus over the past four years, according to food and beverage analytics firm Datassentials. It is currently on the menu of 95 chains across the United States and is expected to grow 74% over the next four years.
Ube exports from the Philippines have increased sharply in recent years. In 2025, the Philippines shipped about $3.2 million worth of ube, or nearly 1.7 million kilograms, an increase of about 20 percent from the previous year, according to Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data shared with CNBC.
The United States was the largest importer, accounting for about $1.6 million, or about half of total exports. Next come Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Joseph said the increased visibility of ube has boosted sales at Kasa and Kin, with the restaurant’s desserts seeing strong demand.
Emily Tang, chief product officer at Datassentials, told CNBC that ube is “accessible from a flavor perspective,” which makes innovation easier.
“It pairs well with things people love, which is coffee, drinks, desserts and pastries, and it has a slight nutty flavor, so its barrier to trying is very low. It’s not a scary flavor; it’s safe to experiment with, and it’s also visually stunning.”
“The perfect trend” Ube is having a moment, but its rise to popularity has been slow. Datassentials has been tracking the flavor since 2017, when it was primarily sold in Filipino bakeries and authentic family restaurants in the United States.
Its first appearance on the international stage was linked to “the rise of Asian culture into the mainstream,” from foods and drinks like Korean fried chicken and boba tea to media like K-pop and K-drama, according to Tang.
A major milestone came in 2022 when Baskin-Robbins offered Ube Coconut Swirl Ice Cream as a limited time item.
“This March has been like the biggest month for the limited time ube deals that we’re tracking at the bigger chains, so now it’s really in the mainstream,” Tang said of this year, and linked its growing popularity to social media.
“It’s so visually dynamic. It’s very Instagrammable. It’s very bright. It spreads very easily through social media, and so ube is just a perfect trend in its behavior,” Tang added.
A search of the ube hashtag shows 120,000 posts on TikTok and over 750,000 posts on Instagram, all featuring ube’s striking purple hue.
The hype around the ingredient is largely driven by a global appetite for more exotic drink and dessert flavors, as food chains aim to replicate the success of Japanese matcha And Dubai Chocolateboth suitable for everything from cakes to milkshakes.
“It’s just part of the eating and drinking culture now, because the demand for beautiful food is as important as the taste,” Andrew Freeman, founder of hospitality consulting firm AF&Co, told CNBC.
Coffee, in particular, has become a topic of interest on social media for the younger generation, who tendency to move away from alcohol consumptionaccording to Freeman.
Ube latte at Kasa and Kin restaurant in Soho, London.
Kasa and Kin
“People are drinking less, so coffee culture is coming back,” he said.
“In this year’s report, we did a whole study on coffee and how it went from being a functional drink to being an over-the-top drink: ‘What can I put on coffee? What can I lather it with?’ What motivates you is you want to get it photographed and have it go viral,” he said.
Tightening of supplyBut while ube enjoys growing demand globally, Filipino farmers are struggling to keep pace as climate change makes weather conditions more unpredictable and limits the supply of quality planting materials, according to The Philippine Root Crops Research and Training Center.
The total production volume of purple yams in the region has decreased every year, down 1.63%, from 13,381 tonnes in 2024 to 12,483 tonnes in 2025, according to PSA data. In 2021, the Philippines produced 14,150 tonnes of purple yam.
Farmer Felisa Ap-ap harvests purple yams on the mountainside on February 13, 2026 in Bayabas village, Sablan, Philippines.
Ezra Acayan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The country even imports Uber from Vietnam to support local demand.
“It’s one of those things early on, you’re going to have a surge in demand, and the supply chain just has to catch up and get a feel for what it’s about,” Kasa and Kin’s Joseph said.
Even though the price of ube has increased, Joseph is not complaining because it is an opportunity for Filipino farmers to charge higher prices.
“A humble crop like a tuber is something that not many people appreciate, so I’m happy for them. If they can get more, they can plant more, great. Please let the world experience ube,” he said.
