Filipino Coffee Retailers Are Going Past the Ube Pattern

Yes, Ayala Coffee has ube drinks: At this level, they’re as important to a Filipino espresso store as cà phê sữa đá — or Vietnamese iced espresso — is to a Vietnamese one. The Union, New Jersey espresso store will get extra area of interest with its inspiration. There are frothy Americanos enhanced with calamansi, espresso tonics with a touch of tamarind, chilly brew enriched with Milo (as within the powdered chocolate drink combine) syrup, and lattes in playful flavors: pandan, cassava cake, leche flan, and jasmine, the Philippines’ nationwide flower. Yes, it’s a sequence of “if you know, you know” touches, however usually talking, they’re additionally simply enjoyable little drinks, stuffed with the flavormaxxed prospers individuals count on from espresso outlets now.

Owners Trixie Jose and Matthew Reyes, who opened Ayala late final yr, needed to create an area in Union, the place Jose grew up, for a youthful technology of Filipinos. Nearby, “there are four or five other Filipino restaurants — mom and pops, super traditional,” Jose says. But these areas are typically full of individuals her mother and father’ age or older; Jose is 32, Reyes is 34. “We wanted to create a third space for people like us,” she says.

Ayala is a part of a rising area of interest of Filipino espresso outlets, becoming a member of institutions like Baby’s Kusina + Market in Philadelphia, Side Practice Coffee in Chicago, Kalesa in Portland, Oregon, Obet & Del’s in Los Angeles, and Teofilo Coffee in Carson, California. Even Lasita, the Filipino rotisserie chicken restaurant in Los Angeles, has launched a weekend cafe idea referred to as Kapé Lasita, which serves drinks like a “langka-ppucino,” that includes jackfruit, or langka in Tagalog. Across the nation, Filipino espresso outlets have been selecting up steam, capitalizing on customers’ urge for food for extra attention-grabbing and sophisticated specialty drinks, as properly their elevated familiarity with flavors like ube and pandan. After all, nearly everybody has ube now — even, at one point, Dunkin’.

For some operators, a part of the objective is to convey a greater understanding of Philippine flavors. As ubiquitous as ube — a tuber with delicate, nutty taste akin to vanilla — has change into within the United States, it has additionally include a degree of erasure, each of origins and of style as individuals utilizing it prioritize its purple enchantment. Jose remembers making an attempt one ube syrup from a big firm and barely tasting something however sweetener.

“What was really important to us was making sure the flavors were as authentic as possible,” Jose says. Instead of counting on taste extracts, Ayala makes its syrups with actual ube, pandan leaves, and jasmine petals. Sometimes individuals hooked on the cassava cake latte ask the place they’ll then discover the unique cake. “We’re serving as a gateway, in a non-traditional sense, to what Philippine cuisine is,” she says.

Indeed, a 2025 consumer insights report from Tastewise discovered that amongst Gen Z, curiosity in Filipino meals is larger in espresso than in some other meals or beverage class — a drink is a low-stakes strategy to attempt one thing new. That’s why Raquel Villanueva Dang needed to open Baby’s, her all-day institution in Philadelphia. “I wanted to create a space where people could experience Filipino food in a setting that’s a little bit more accessible and affordable,” she says. While you possibly can ball out on a scorching platter of fatty-bellied milkfish sisig for market worth throughout dinner service, you too can simply swing by within the morning for a Milo mocha, $6.50. Baby’s, a long-awaited opening, has change into a neighborhood hotspot.

For a few of these homeowners, centering the Filipino American perspective means additionally looking for out espresso beans from the Philippines. “If we’re going to do everything with intention, then we [should] do the extra legwork to bring in Filipino cultivated beans,” Dang says, noting the extra effort and prices.

Though the Philippines was once the fourth-largest espresso producer on this planet, its manufacturing took a pointy decline through the late nineteenth century attributable to a illness that impacts espresso vegetation, and it by no means absolutely bounced again. That’s to not say that Philippine farmers have stopped rising espresso, however rather that their prospects have been challenging. In current years, there’s been a push to revitalize Philippine espresso from teams like Kalsada, which beforehand partnered with Blue Bottle in an try to return the Philippines to “coffee exceptionalism.”

At Ayala, Jose and Reyes supply beans from Kalsada within the Philippines, then work with Modcup in Jersey City to roast them. Baby’s companions with Minorya Coffee, a small espresso farm within the Philippines, for its beans after which roasts them in collaboration with Philadelphia’s specialty Vietnamese roaster Càphê.

The Philippine-grown beans that form the basis of Baby’s espresso drinks are generally known as kapeng barako, they usually’re not the everyday arabica you’ll discover at most espresso outlets within the US. Rather, they’re liberica, a comparatively uncommon (and never particularly fashionable, at least during this century) espresso selection identified for its giant bean dimension and daring taste.

As maybe you’ve observed from the worth of your common bag of beans, so much is happening with espresso currently: Volatile climate affecting coffee harvests within the main espresso suppliers of Brazil and Vietnam has despatched costs hovering. Liberica, a hardier bean, might symbolize alternative. “Given the status of coffee beans and the shortage of arabica, people are looking into liberica as the future of coffee beans,” says Regina Santos of Minorya. “When it comes to liberica, it’s about education and introducing it to the market.” Enter the ube latte made with barako.

The Filipino espresso store represents so many various issues without delay. But for one factor, it looks like the long run.