Day: August 11, 2016

By Teresa Naval In early July, Elite Daily called ube the “new matcha.” The two are fundamentally different food: one is powdered green tea with roots in Chinese and Japanese

In early July, Elite Daily called ube the “new matcha.” The two are fundamentally different food: one is powdered green tea with roots in Chinese and Japanese tea ceremonies, the other is purple yam (often sweetened and turned into a jam) native to Southast Asia.

Both have been culinary staples for thousands of years, but I guess not exactly—not until they were discovered by the Western world and deemed the next trendy ingredient. Did ube truly matter before Elite Daily was “looking to add a pop of color to [their] dull food porn posts?”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with ube—or matcha, or hummus, or curry—becoming more embraced in other parts of the world. Good food is good food, after all. Things become trickier when identities become conflated with a singular “exotic” dish, or when the best (and most expensive) “authentic” restaurants are managed by white chefs who spent a summer in the jungles of [insert “exotic” locale], bonded with the kind-hearted natives and wanted to translate their earth-shattering consumption of cuisine and culture to the plate. Bell hooks writes in Eating the Other: “[i]n many ways, it is a contemporary revival of interest in the ‘primitive,’ with a distinctly postmodern slant.”