Ube, the new star of coffee shops!

Welcome to Kapé, the first Filipino coffee shop in Paris. Since it opened a year ago, it’s been constantly busy, thanks to a powerful secret weapon: ube. This variety of yam, native to Southeast Asia and mainly grown in the Philippines, stands out in the culinary world for one particular trait, its nearly fluorescent purple hue, which is setting social media ablaze.

The color war is on, with Japanese matcha and its fine green tea powder in the crosshairs. Like its Japanese rival, ube is good for your health, packed with antioxidants and vitamins, but it has the advantage of price: expect to pay around €12 per kilo for ube powder, compared to nearly €100 for matcha.

Back on the terrace at Kapé, Éva and Ambrine, both students, have come to try the Ube Milk, a purple milk that’s one of the café’s best-sellers. “We discovered it on TikTok and the surprising color made us want to try it,” one of them tells us. The verdict is mixed. “The drink is beautiful, perfect for Instagram, but the taste is a bit disappointing,” admits Ambrine.
Personally, I tried the ube latte, an iced coffee with yam and milk. The diluted purple hue in the black coffee is less striking, but the vanilla and hazelnut notes of this root blend nicely with the coffee.
Make no mistake, ube isn’t a niche trend but a global wave that has spread over the past few years, across Asia of course, but also in more Western markets like the United States.

This yam is also the visible marker of another phenomenon: the rapid rise of Asian coffee shops. In Asia, coffee is increasingly replacing tea as the drink of choice. These coffee shops fully intend to shake up traditional codes, from decor to new brewing techniques, in a market historically dominated by Americans and Nordic countries.