Coffee and Dumplings

Cold-brewed iced coffee?

by Trey Popp

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Published: Sep 18, 2007

Tucked beside a narrow hallway in the nondescript office building at 1015 Chestnut St., Sant Gardez Pan de Vida isn't much to look at. But it does have one thing I've been casually seeking all summer: iced coffee. Let me explain.

Back in June, The New York Times ran a small article heralding an alternative way for coffee lovers to get their chilled fix. Like most people, I thought that there was only one route to iced coffee: Boil up some water, pass it through ground beans, and stick the steaming pitcher in the fridge.

But evidently a little-known method had begun to circulate among a rarified elite in the kingdom of coffee snobs: cold-brewed iced coffee, in which the water never gets hotter than room temperature. This recipe called for mixing cool water with coffee grounds in a Mason jar, stirring them up, and letting the chunky brew sit on your kitchen counter for about 18 hours. Then, you strain it to obtain a rich "concentrate" which could then be diluted with more water and served over ice.

I got hooked immediately. The flavor profile was nuanced and terrific, and cold-brewed coffee is less bitter than hot-brewed stuff, meaning there is less need to add sugar. It also has less caffeine. The only problem was that I had to plan a day ahead, and my newfound snobbery now prevented me from buying hot-brewed iced coffee around town.

So when I saw Sant Gardez Pan de Vida's hand-lettered sign advertising the treat — on a La Colombe placard, no less — it seemed there might be a reason to visit this obscure building after all.

Happily, the glass they poured me was delicious, if a little weaker than I make it at home. A splash of half-and-half bumped it up a notch. The hot coffee was admirable, too, for a deli, and the urns were surrounded by various syrups to please customers without the time to wait in line at Starbucks for their frou-frou concoctions.

The eatery has a broad array of the expected fare — burgers, turkey panini, chicken salad and the like — but for my money, the only way to go is with the handful of Korean nibbles tacked on to the menu. Filled with ground pork and broken glass noodles, crescent-shaped dumplings have an addictive flavor made even more irresistible by the slight crisp they pick up from the sautée griddle. A very reasonable $3.75 buys six, plus a cup of spicy soy sauce to pour on top.

Another decent bet is a beef bulgogi hoagie, in which the one-note greasiness of chopped steak is replaced with thinly sliced beef marinated in soy sauce, sugar, spices and perhaps a little sesame oil. After all, might as well try a variation on a classic cheesesteak while you're downing that alt-iced-coffee.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Sant Gardez Pan de Vida | 1015 Chestnut St. (first floor of Jefferson Medical Building) 215-627-4727 | Hours: Mon.-Fri., 6:30 a.m.-4 p.m.; closed Saturday and Sunday. | Takeout available.

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