Ube, matcha, buko pandan: This baker is bringing a taste of the Philippines to Tucson

Tucson isn’t home to a lot of Filipino food.

There’s Fiesta Filipina in the food court at Park Place Mall, selling Filipino favorites like lumpia, pancit and pork adobo. About a street over is Nick’s Sari-Sari Store, which has a small restaurant tucked inside a market where you can find ube-flavored wafers and frozen fish. You might have seen food truck Johnny’s Philippine Grill at events around town, too.

Kim Johnston, the home baker behind Fili Bakery, is adding to the tiny list of spots bringing Filipino flavors to Tucson.

“When you think about Filipino culture — it’s a mixture of Spanish, Chinese and American flavors. It’s this cultural fusion that is unique to the Philippines, and I think that’s something that should be shared,” she says.

While Johnston also makes sweets like cupcakes and pies, you can currently find her cookies — in flavors like ube, matcha and buko pandan — at The Monica downtown and Scented Leaf in Main Gate Square. She says she'd love to expand with other confections in the future.

If you’re unfamiliar, ube is purple in color and often compared to a yam or sweet potato. It’s found in lots of Filipino treats, from jams to ice creams, and has a nutty, vanilla-y flavor. Buko pandan is a bright-green, cold Filipino dessert with jellies, coconut and cream.

“I try to bring these flavors I grew up with, in an approachable way,” Johnston says.

For example, ube is the center of halaya — one Filipino baking website refers to it as purple yam jam. Johnston recognizes that those who are unfamiliar with ube might be hesitant to dive into something like halaya.

“So instead what I do is I take a chocolate chip cookie base and incorporate Filipino flavors, so it’s more approachable and more of a gateway to the flavor,” she says. “Once trying that, it’s like, ‘This is really good as a cookie. Maybe I can try it in its more traditional form.’”

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Johnston’s love for baking started as a hobby — a way to do something for herself. She began with basic baked goods, then started creating recipes of her own and making desserts that she found to be more challenging — pies, which are now her favorite to bake.

Her cottage bakery, originally called Butter and Flour Pies, started in 2020. Soon after, she stumbled upon Keep Local Alive, a group that supports locally-owned small businesses.

“I saw Keep Local Alive and I really liked their mission — highlighting local businesses,” she says.

When she saw that they had positions open for community members to become ambassadors, Johnston thought: “Hey, that’s me.”

As an ambassador, she visited small businesses around Tucson and eventually caught the eye of Ray Flores, the president of the Si Charro group behind El Charro Cafe. She told him about her baked goods — including the Filipino flavors she was incorporating into some of them.

“He was like, ‘There’s your story right there,’” Johnston recalls. “He was like, ‘Pies are cool and everything, but Filipino cookies say something about your heritage.’”

Johnston, who now helps with El Charro's marketing and is the community director of Yocal, was born in the Philippines and moved to the United States when she was 7 years old. For a while, she didn't feel proud of her culture or the food she was eating. That isn’t the case anymore.

“I think the biggest cultural gap, apart from the language, is food,” she says. “I went to school one time and my mom would pack me Filipino food. I remember bringing that to school and the kids were like... freaked out. And as a 7-year-old, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is weird.’”

“Me baking with these flavors is sort of a reunion with this culture,” she says. “I’m proud of it and want to share it with other people.”

Find Fili Bakery's cookies near the cash register at The Monica, 40 E. Congress St., and at Scented Leaf, 943 E. University Blvd. Keep up with Fili Bakery on Instagram.