Ants Pants Cafe

by Kirsten Henri

2212 South St. 215.875.8002. www.antspantscafe.com
Latte: $3.21

During the great fiscal crisis of 2003 (my own, not the country's) I made a tough decision: no more morning visits to cafes. I'd been asking myself some difficult questions--why don't I have any savings? Where's my 401(k)? And for the love of God, will I ever be able to buy a $500 pair of Marc Jacobs shoes? The answer was clear: The $3 latte was to blame. A $3 latte five times a week is $15 a week, which turns into $60 a month, which morphs into a shocking $720 a year that I could be stashing in a mutual fund where it would grow into a warm and fuzzy nest egg. Little pleasures deferred now, say the experts, equal thousands in retirement dollars later. So out went the latte, but the pleasure of rolling out of bed and straight to the coffee shop for a frothy jolt of caffeine and a crinkly newspaper has been missed--that is, until Ants Pants Cafe opened up down the street from my house. I investigated it, purely in the interest of research, and dammit, I can sense a cafe relapse on the horizon. This sunny little place is near perfect, and I'll happily throw my $3 worth of retirement money into its till for one of the most delicious lattes I've had in a long time. Ants Pants is your basic cafe with a dash of Australia here and there (the name is Australian slang for "the best"--not to be confused with my mother's slang, where it signified "hyperactive child spaz"), serving a short but sweet menu of breakfast and lunch fare all day. I had the excellent bacon stack, a slab of toast topped with crispy fried eggs, bacon, arugula, tomato and pecorino cheese, and hearty sweet potato fries, thick-cut wedges of sweet potato served with sour cream and a sweet, vaguely Asian chili sauce for dipping. Next on my list to sample are the decadent-sounding creme brulee French toast and the "boiler maker," coffee amped up with a shot of espresso. I'll have plenty of opportunities to do so now that I've decided to take my chances with the savings account, the shoes and the long run. Putting a cushy retirement in jeopardy suddenly seems a small price to pay for a daily cup of contentment.

This article appears in the Philadelphia Weekly and can be found online here...