Pinoy sorbetes 'dirty ice cream' making waves in Belgium

MANILA, Philippines — Our favorite Pinoy dirty ice cream is getting its much-deserved attention in Belgium, thanks to Sorbetes Ni Manong Jelle, a food enterprise by Filipina nurse Kamille Rodriguez.

Rodriguez and her Flemish husband Jelle Bories developed their own twist to the Filipino traditional ice cream in Sint Niklaas, Belgium.

Jelle, a pastry chef, attended an ice cream-making class in 2019 and got himself an ice cream-maker machine, which helped him experiment with usual ice cream flavors like vanilla and chocolate. The couple started making ice cream at home as a hobby.

The chef then decided to experiment with ube, a traditional Filipino ice cream flavor.

"We started offering it to our friends and they liked it," Kamille shared in an interview with GMA.

In 2020, they started officially selling it as a business product, wherein they deliver the Pinoy sorbetes to their clients door-to-door.

Kamilled explained that there might be a lot of ice cream stores in Belgium, then she added, "But we are the only one who offers Filipino ice cream, and also Asian ice cream."

Sorbetes Ni Manong Jelle offers other well-loved Filipino flavors like buko, halu-halo, mango and guyabano. 

"We recently purchased ice bikes for now, kasi takot pa kaming magkaroon ng physical store and ice-cream shop."

The food entrepreneurs shared their future plan, "We hope to export our products to nearby countries.”