Manila’s favorite colorful root vegetable, the ube, or purple yam, has found a new home today: stuffed deep inside a flaky, crusty, warm pastry and served up hot, fresh, and cheap at everyone’s favorite Filipino fast food joint, Jollibee.
The ube pie was introduced this morning and can be experienced for P29 for a single pie, or P82 for three.
The chain has been teasing the new menu item in viral posts on their page for the last few days, revealing the purple color and texture — which Pinoys immediately guessed to be ube — but not the product itself. The most popular guess for the colorful new addition was ice cream or a sundae. However, most people just tagged their friends and said that they needed to go and try it.
Ube has long been used in Filipino desserts, and is popular in Thailand as well, where it’s served sweet or savory and known as man muang. Recently, though, the colorful, antioxidant-packed yam has been gaining traction all over the world, being called “the new matcha” due to both it’s fast-growing popularity and supposed health benefits.
The humble potato associate even had its own feature in GQ magazine.
Though Jollibee also has outlets in Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and the US, it appears the viral new purple pie is a treat reserved only for customers in the Philippines.
Jollibee has not announced if the new pie is a limited-time item or permanent edition to the menu.
