Can Pandan Become New York’s Next Matcha?

(Bloomberg) —  A decade ago, it was dusky green matcha. Then came masala chai, yuzu and ube. Now another distinct Asian ingredient is wending its way through New York City’s dining scene. 

Pandan is a staple ingredient in Southeast Asian cuisine, used to give beverages, desserts and savory dishes a simultaneous hit of sweetness and earthiness. The blade-like leaves, which grow at least two feet long, are believed to have come from the present-day Moluccas islands in East Indonesia. One of the first recorded reference to pandan was in 1832.

A slew of well-known dishes feature the fragrant herb: gai hor bai toey, a Thai fried chicken dish; nasi lemak, a Malaysian favorite where the rice is cooked with coconut milk and pandan leaves; and banh bo nuong, a brightly green-hued honeycomb cake from Vietnam. 

“Without it, it’s pretty obvious. Your food loses a signature whiff and flavor,” says Sharon Wee, a New York-based Singaporean cookbook author. Pandan’s fresh taste, which is imbued by either simmering it with other ingredients or blending  it to create an extract, cuts out the heaviness from the coconut milk, sugar and chicken fat that it’s often used with, she adds.

Now pandan is popping up across the city, and not just at Southeast Asian bakeries such as Bánh by Lauren and Lady Wong. In May, Cronut creator Dominique Ansel featured a strawberry pandan filling for his signature treat to celebrate the famed pastry’s 11th birthday. Before that, he served pandan coconut chiffon cake and pandan coconut almond bostock—a version of the classic French pastry that he made by soaking brioche in pandan coconut custard, then baking it with almond frangipane—at his Flatiron bakery, the Workshop. 

Beyond its evocative vanilla and coconut notes, pandan’s naturally vibrant mint color lends itself to pastries, said Ansel in an email. “A lot of people out there have never had pandan before, so it’s always fun to experiment and introduce our guests to new ingredients.” 

Baldor Specialty Foods, an East Coast distributor that supplies to notable restaurants and bars in the region, says it had 15% more unique customers from January to June this year ordering pandan leaves than in the same period last year.

Besides the herb’s social-media-friendly hue, pandan’s growing popularity may have something to do with demographics. The population of people of Southeast Asian descent in the US grew by 13% from 2012 to 2022, according to a Bloomberg calculation of census data, while America’s population rose by only 6.2% in the same period.

In the US, frozen pandan leaves are readily available in Asian grocery stores. So is pandan extract, though cooks see them as second-best to the actual leaves. Neither cost more than a few dollars: Packets of 4 or 8 ounces can sell for under $3. A similar amount of an equally fragrant flavoring agent, vanilla beans, costs at least 20 times the price.  Given its floral, earthy taste, bartenders have been experimenting with pandan too. At Mace, owner Nico de Soto created a pandan cocktail using a salted pandan syrup, burnt butter, hay bourbon and cedar wood bitters. Bourbon’s woody flavor “match[es] perfectly” with pandan, he says. 

The French bartender said he fell for the herb in in 2010, when he tasted a pandan cake for the second time, and started using it in drinks to give them a long, nutty finish. “When you put it in the cocktail with all its layers, and then at the end, the pandan strikes and just stays there for a minute or two—it’s just amazing.”  

De Soto is so taken with pandan that he recently launched a pandan liqueur called Kota that’s distributed to bars in France. Later this year it will be available in the UK and Germany; next January it will arrive in US.  

At the Clocktower restaurant bar, pandan is infused in bourbon for two days and then mixed with a banana liqueur and demerara sugar to create the Polynesian,  a drink introduced last fall.

Mark Murphy, director of bar operations at Clocktower’s parent company Starr Restaurants, describes the plant’s flavor profile as “vegetal yet marshmallow,” helping to round off the darker whiskey notes.

The cocktail has gotten mixed reactions so far, he says. The ingredients don’t read to normal whiskey drinkers—pandan’s tropical nature appears to pair better with rum. “But those who try it say they enjoy it,” Murphy adds. 

Pandan is still a niche product in the US, appearing only on 0.8% of US menus, according to figures from food and beverage data provider Datassential.  It’s still mostly found at restaurants serving Southeast Asian food. But it’s popping up on American-focused menus, which is generally the first sign of a trend, says Claire Conaghan, Datassential’s associate director and trendologist. 

“After ube’s success due to an approachable flavor and gorgeous color we expect pandan isn’t far behind,” she says. 

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