For the Best Iced Coffee, Get to Jersey City

With good reason, American tourists are advised not to seek out iced coffee in Europe. Cold coffee does exist on the continent, but the average cafe does not concern itself with making and storing buckets of cold brew for pint-size to-go cups. And getting more than a few cubes of ice in anything is a legitimate challenge. Instead, a handful of regional iced espresso drinks fill the void, like the frothy Grecian freddo, cream-topped einspanner, and classic shakerato. But the best and arguably least appreciated of these is from Puglia — a two-ingredient drink of almond syrup layered with espresso over ice called caffè Leccese.

I have not yet been to Lecce, but I am happy to report that instead of booking a flight to Southern Italy, anyone who wants to try this can just take a PATH train to New Jersey, the home of Bread and Salt. The Jersey City bakery is best known for rustic pizza, crispy focaccia sandwiches, and old-school Italian specialties like fried baccalà and braised escarole. It is the place that introduced me to caffè Leccese. I am convinced it is the best version in the world.

A typical caffè Leccese may resemble a plain shot of espresso on ice, while Bread and Salt’s version more closely resembles a small iced latte, distributing the sweetness with creamy equilibrium and a sinking layer of espresso on top.

“The syrup they use in Lecce is much thinner,” says Rick Easton, Bread and Salt’s owner, who first put the drink on his menu in 2022. Instead of the usual almond-flavored syrup, Easton appeals to dairy-loving Americans with a rich almond milk he makes by blending sticky Italian almond jam with hot water until it reaches the consistency of half-and-half. His favorite jam is made by Marco Colzani in Lake Como, which mixes three types of native Sicilian almonds for the perfect blend of texture and flavor. Easton landed on it after a surprising amount of R&D; he also likes Caffè Sicilia’s almond spread for the job as it’s made with the intensely aromatic Romana variety, which gives the milk a more noticeable nuttiness. He has even experimented with grinding almonds to make the paste from scratch, but he prefers the consistent results that come from the jarred concentrate.

Since I can’t make it to Jersey City as often as I’d like to drink the best iced coffee in the world, I attempted to re-create Bread and Salt’s almondy milk at home, approximating Easton’s ratio of “just a hair over a pint” of hot water per jar of almond spread — at $22 per jar, it’s precious — and emulsifying the mix with an immersion blender until the texture seems right. Resist the urge to overly dilute this; it should be rich and sweet enough to stand up to strong coffee and ice in a small but intense portion. And don’t skip the step of letting it chill completely in the fridge before adding some to a glass of ice.

I topped mine with espresso made from the same Capacity Coffee beans the bakery uses. While drinking it, I calculated about $6 worth of almonds in my glass, a figure that disappeared as the next sip brought a smile to my face, though I still won’t pour Sicilian almond milk on my Fruity Pebbles. “It’s an expensive drink,” says Easton, who charges $6.50 for his version. “At first, we only offered it in the summer. But we figured out pretty quickly that people want to drink it year-round, so it is always on the menu.”