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A fragrant green leaf is taking over coffee, cocktail and dessert menus along the Peninsula.
Pandan – a sweet, grassy and floral ingredient often called the “vanilla of Southeast Asia” – is the latest flavor to go mainstream in Silicon Valley, following the footsteps of other standouts such as ube and black sesame.
A staple of Southeast Asian cuisine, the flavor has been appearing more frequently in other settings, including in contemporary bars and craft coffee shops.
“The way I describe (pandan) is a combination of vanilla and coconut flavor, and it has grassy tones,” said Lisa Maria, owner of Indonesian coffee shop Hijau. “It’s very subtle, but once you are familiar, it’s very distinctive.”
Maria grew up in Indonesia with bushes of pandan leaves in her backyard. She recalls cutting the leaves and using them in desserts, snacks and even as room freshener.
After nearly 20 years working in corporate in the U.S., Maria got laid off and decided to start her own business. Taking inspiration from her parents, who were coffee roasters, she decided to open Hijau, an Indonesian coffee pop-up at De Anza College Farmers Market in Cupertino. A San Jose brick-and-mortar location is expected to open this summer.
“I think of coffee as my own canvas to introduce Indonesian flavors to the Bay Area,” she said.
Hijau’s menu prominently features pandan, including a pandan latte and a klepon latte (which features the flavors of the Southeast Asian confection: coconut, palm sugar and pandan); soda gembira (a creamy coconut-pandan soda); pandan soda; and pandan steamer (pandan-flavored frothed milk).
“When I started, (pandan) wasn’t that prominent, and I noticed the frequency I had to explain what pandan is more often than maybe the past six months to a year,” Maria said.
While Indonesian cuisine is relatively limited along the Peninsula, she hopes to bring more awareness of Indonesian culture and flavors through Hijau.
“It’s very joyful for me to talk about the ingredient that I grew up with,” she said. “I’m happy to see more curiosity around the ingredient, and hopefully indirectly it will bring awareness to Southeast Asian cuisine.”
Pandan coffee drinks can also be found at spots such as Big Mug Coffee Roaster in Santa Clara, Phin Cafe in Campbell, and Pour Decisions Craft and Robu Coffee in Mountain View.
Pandan has also made its way into a variety of Peninsula cocktail menus. In Brisbane, 7 Mile House offers a banana pandan martini; in San Mateo, Avenida Restaurant has a pandan old fashioned and a pandan Collins (called “Summer Back Home”); BarZola in Palo Alto serves a gin-based cocktail flavored with strawberry, lychee and pandan (called “Moon Safari”); and in San Mateo, Fogbird has a milk punch with toasted rice- and Earl Grey-infused rum and pandan liqueur.
At recently opened Causwells, an American restaurant in Menlo Park, the cocktail menu features a pandan ube milk punch. Co-owner and beverage director Elmer Mejicanos said the inspiration came from one of his former restaurants. He had previously developed a Southeast Asian-inspired cocktail program for Lilah in San Francisco and loved the body that pandan gives cocktails, saying it tastes “almost like vanilla cake.”
“I think that Southeast Asian flavors as a whole are just interesting, and I think people are starting to experiment with those flavors,” Mejicanos said. “A lot more people are doing it.”
Mejicanos said that juicing pandan leaves results in a grassier, effervescent flavor, while boiling them yields a more savory, cakey flavor. In the case of his milk punch, which features rum, rice, citrus and salted ube macadamia foam, he found that the latter flavor pairs better.
Mejicanos thinks one reason pandan is prominent in the bar scene is because it’s easier for bars to play around with different ingredients than a cuisine-specific restaurant.
At Horsefeather in Palo Alto, bar manager CK Toribio took inspiration from his Filipino heritage to create the Bahay Buko, a buko pandan-inspired cocktail with whiskey, green chartreuse, coconut, pandan and citrus. There’s also a zero-proof cocktail called the Coco-Cabana, featuring nonalcoholic gin, pandan, coconut water, lemon and toasted coconut salt.
Toribio said that in the past, he’s incorporated pandan into cocktails in the form of a tincture, where he infuses the leaf into very high-proof alcohol. But for Horsefeather’s current pandan drinks, he uses a sous vide to infuse the pandan into coconut water, blending in some pandan for color.
He thinks that pandan’s rise in popularity is likely due to people being more open to trying new flavors and learning about other cultures, the aesthetic nature of pandan’s bright green color and its vanilla-like flavor, which many people are familiar with and already enjoy.
Pandan is also appearing in desserts. At Valley Goat in Sunnyvale, find pandan flan with pandan caramel and yogurt cremeux. Inspired by pastry chef Sasha Tran’s Vietnamese heritage, the dessert is reminiscent of a childhood snack of yogurt and condensed milk.
“I just wanted to do a fun, nostalgic dessert for the springtime,” she said.
To make the pandan flan, Tran blends fresh pandan with water and strains it to make pandan juice. Then she combines the juice with eggs, cream, sugar and pandan essence to create the custard. While pandan is typically used in sweet applications, she’s seen it used in a few savory dishes, including pandan-infused sticky rice paired with fried chicken.
Tran said she’s not surprised that pandan is becoming more prevalent on local menus, noting that there’s a large Asian population in the Bay Area.
“I see a lot of ube and pandan. It’s just a really fun, tropical-ish flavor, and it also caters to the demographic,” she said.
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