How I brought the single-origin ube from the Philippines to Beirut
I've always had an eye for what's next. A few years ago I co-founded Kalm, one of Lebanon's first Pilates studios. It was a time when most people I spoke to still couldn't tell you what Pilates was. And I watched it become a movement. Lebanon adopted it completely, the way Lebanon does with everything it falls in love with.
I was already running a business and working a full-time job. I went back for an MBA anyway to come home with a new idea, one worth building in Lebanon.
I searched across more than ten countries, most of them in Southeast Asia. I was convinced the answer would be Japan or South Korea: the innovation, the culture, the obsessive attention to experience. It wasn't there.
The Philippines was my last stop in Southeast Asia. I almost skipped it.
It was in El Nido, on the last stretch of Palawan, that I found ube — a purple yam quietly woven through Filipino kitchens, coffee shops, and culture. Vivid, deeply rooted, unlike anything I'd found anywhere before it.
The colour stops you first: an improbable violet, warm and deep. Then the flavour, faintly sweet, with a nuttiness that lingers.
That impossible violet, warm and deep, like a sunset you want to eat.
Lebanon. A country that understands food as love, and brings the best of the world home. Its cafés have multiplied and grown more discerning, with the best of the world finding a place here. Ube has not. Not yet.
sãde is that idea, my bet on Lebanese curiosity and on a simple conviction: when something genuinely good arrives and is handled with care, this country takes to it at once.
Every pouch carries something of the Philippines: the colour, the flavour, the place I found it.
Ube is finding its way to Lebanon. sãde is the brand to hold it, sourced with intention, presented with care, and built for the way this country falls in love with what's good.
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