Filipino mango dessert chain Maxi Mango started out as a pop-up food fair kiosk in Davao City in 2017. But in the two years that it has been around, it has managed to expand to over 43 permanent outlets in its native Philippines. Its appeal? Vivid yellow mango soft-serve ice cream sprinkled with various toppings like crushed graham crackers and ube (purple yam) sauce.

Yep, it’s a little bit like the Filipino version of Hong Kong mango dessert chain Hui Lui Shan. And its soft-serve cups look like the pretty fruit-topped froyo you’d get from a Llao Llao or Yolé outlet, except you can only get mango-based picks here.

So popular are Maxi Mango’s desserts on social media, Filipino fans have been known to queue up for a whopping four hours to get a taste of the fruity soft serve (the hysteria has since calmed down to a 15 to 30 minutes wait) when the shops first opened.

Unlike the creamy, milky soft-serve made popular by the Japanese, Maxi Mango’s soft-serve is made with just enough milk to create a pliable consistency. What’s unique about their ice cream is the addition of puréed fresh mangoes — the chain imports the Cebu mangga variety, prized for its intense sweetness and golden hue, that’s grown in southern Philippines.

Come August 2, Maxi Mango will open its first franchised Singapore outlet at Capitol Piazza. It’s located on the same City Hall MRT station-linked stretch as Taiwanese brown sugar bubble tea chain Tiger Sugar.

The takeaway-only shop is decked out in the brand’s signature red, with large menus adorning the walls. If this shop attracts the same hordes as Maxi Mango’s Filipino outlets, rest assure there’s enough space to queue at the walkway outside the shop.

Maxi Mango is owned by Filipino husband-and-wife Ivan Velasquez (left) and Miki Velasquez right), both 31. They partnered a Singaporean investor to open a franchised outlet here, and are currently in town to personally train the Singapore outlet’s staff.

The couple, who met as high school classmates in Davao City and later got hitched, started their business with meagre resources. “Ivan and I were working as nurses in London when we heard about an opportunity to start a soft-serve business. Someone was looking for people to bring his ice cream business to the south (Davao City is located in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao), so we took the chance to move back home,” Miki tells us. “The reason we wanted to go back to the Philippines was that our son was two years old at that time, and London wasn’t the best environment for him. My husband and I were working shifts and taking turns to take care of our son, and my husband hardly had time to rest.”

So the couple invested their combined savings into setting up a soft serve kiosk. “We started out with another concept selling soft serve in different flavours like vanilla and blueberry. But we realised that nobody wanted to order the mango flavour if there are other flavours available, although mangoes are our city’s produce,” says Miki, adding that she saw the chance to carve a niche for her brand in her home country and overseas as “Filipinos making a Filipino product”.

Other than the lower-than-average milk content and puréed mangoes added to the soft serve, Maxi Mango’s house-made ice cream in Singapore is also significantly less sweet than in the Philippines. “We reduced the sugar level for our soft serve mix by as much as 50%, because Singaporeans don’t like things that are too sweet.”

There are five types of mango soft-serve desserts and two mango-based shakes offered here, including a Singapore-exclusive Mango Coconut soft serve cup. The flavours here are fixed, so you can’t customise your toppings like you’re at a froyo shop.

8days.sg dropped by for a sneak preview of the shop, tried the mango desserts, and tell you our verdict below.

Unlike its counterparts drizzled with bells and whistles like yam sauce and coconut, this signature cup consists of just a dollop of mango soft serve crammed with fresh mango cubes. Our first impression of the mango soft serve: it has an unusually firm texture, almost like mousse. Maxi Mango’s lady boss Miki tells us it’s ’cos of the addition of mango purée, plus, “most soft serve is soft because of its gelatin content, but we reduced that so it’s healthier”. We prefer the smooth, creamy texture of traditional Japanese-style soft serve.

However, what we tried is also the first batch that was cranked out of the shop’s new machine. “We’re still adjusting the machine,” says Miki as she makes a second batch for us, which is (fortunately) much more velvety with a more pronounced mango flavour and a pleasing tanginess.

That said, we have a sweet tooth and find the reduced sugar soft serve a tad bland, while our colleague opines that it’s “just nice”. The fresh Pinoy mango cubes are gloriously golden. But contrary to our expectations, not very sweet. According to Miki, that’s also intentional to cater to Singaporeans’ taste buds. “The mangoes we import have their sweetness level measured with a Brix meter (a device used to measure sugar content in fruits), and we chose the sweetness level that we think is acceptable for the Singapore market, which is not too sweet,” she explains. Still, since we’re already gorging on soft serve, we’d rather risk our health and go all out for satisfyingly sweet, ripe mangoes.

This cup is basically Maxi Mango with crushed graham cracker bits and sweet cream (which is made with milk and sugar and not as sweet as it sounds) added to it. We like the shiok crunch that the sugary graham crackers offer; it adds some sweetness to the mango soft serve. This is also like a mod version of the traditional Filipino homemade dessert called Refrigerator Cake, where layers of crushed graham crackers, sweet cream and sliced fruits are chilled till firm to make a ‘cake’.

Keso is a Filipino specialty treat that combines the odd bedfellows of cheddar cheese and sweet cream. The word is derived from the Spanish word queso, which means ‘cheese’ (the Philippines used to be a Spanish colony). The flavour is all the rage in the Philippines, though we think it’s still a novelty in Singapore. Maxi Mango’s Keso cup is loaded with mango soft serve, sweet cream and bits of French cheddar cheese. The sweet-savoury combo is surprisingly yummy, especially with fresh mangoes. Kinda like eating mango cheesecake.

A Maxi Mango cup, drizzled with bright purple house-made ube (purple yam) sauce. We couldn’t taste much of the taro-like indigenous Filipino yam flavour in this (there’s only a very faint hint). The yellow-purple colour contrast is good for the ’gram, but the other flavours are more exciting for the palate.

This Singapore exclusive flavour features a Maxi Mango cup with graham crackers, coconut syrup and fresh coconut bits, an ingredient which Miki reckons is popular with Singaporeans. It’s pretty refreshing; the light fruity flavours make us feel like we’re enjoying this on a beach holiday.

Mango soft serve is blended with puréed mangoes and ice to create this shake. It’s as thirst-quenching as it looks, but again, it’s not sweet. We hope Maxi Mango considers using sweeter mangoes in the future.

Like the Mango Graham soft serve cup, this shake is jazzed up with some crunchy graham cracker bits, which makes the shake sweeter and more fun to drink. But we’d rather ingest the natural sugar from fresh mangoes.

The much hyped-about Maxi Mango boasts hardcore fans, so we sampled its desserts with high expectations. The chilled treats are refreshing, fun, and we like the fact that it contains real mango puree and not artificial flavourings. However, for folks with a sweet tooth like us, it’s a pity that the brand has decided to drastically cut down on its products’ sugar level (where’s the fun in that?) in Singapore. But there’s hope, since the soft serve is made fresh in-house daily and can be tweaked.

For its opening promotion, Maxi Mango is partnering activities booking provider Klook to offer 50% off your order (limited to the first 3,000 cups). Place your order via Klook here with the promo code ‘GOMAXIMANGO’ from Aug 1, and collect your desserts from Aug 2 when the shop officially opens. Don’t say bo jio.

Maxi Mango opens Aug 2 at #B2-29 Capitol Piazza, S178905. Tel: 6385-6568. Open daily 11.30am-10pm. www.maximango.com.sg.

PHOTOS: ​​​​​​​MARK LEE