This is from the Brooklyn Banya website. Full disclosure: most of the women in bikinis I saw were not wearing hats.

I tightened my towel and slithered along the wall, trying not to interfere in the conversation between the proprietor of the Brooklyn Banya and another man (which was perhaps a friendly disagreement or perhaps just shy of coming to blows—it was hard to say), but before I could inch out of sight, the owner grinned at me happily, pumped his fist in the air and said, “Yaaaah! Americaaaan!” I took this as some sort of ebullient welcome to his house of Russian-ness, so I sniffled and weakly raised my fist in return.

A summer cold is an insidious affliction, sneaking up on you with its chills and fevers while everyone else is still frolicking happily in the sunshine. And so when one hit me this past weekend, I decided to fight fire with fire—I was going to sweat the thing out of me.

It’s true that, at least for most people, the main attraction at the banya on Coney Island Avenue is not the food, but I had sound reasons for considering this a PitchKnives excursion. For one, even the non-edible portions of a bath house have a hint of the culinary. Where else can you simulate the experience of baking yourself (dry sauna), parboiling yourself (steam room) or poaching yourself inside a eucalyptus leaf (wet sauna)? But more importantly, I figured that any people who included Siberia within their borders would boast some powerful cold-battling vittles.

So after steaming some of the evil spirits out of my pores, I perused the café menu. You can eat in a room that is more like a proper restaurant, or you can just stay in your swimsuit and eat at one of the plastic tables tucked in one corner of the banya. I chose the latter and took in the scene while I waited for my juice and pierogi. The dim lighting and the blurry fresco on the wall gave the place a secluded subterranean look, and the telecast of the Olympics playing from a TV in the corner added to the pleasant feel of an old-school gymnasium. I was feeling more like a Tolstoy character with every passing moment.

I had ordered a blend of orange and grapefruit juices and when it came it was…a little weird. It was thick and frothy as if they had spontaneously decided to toss in a banana as well. But it did come in a tall, nifty glass and provided a punch of vitamin C. Much more impressive were the potato pierogi (or vereniki), served with sour cream and caramelized onions and swimming in a buttery broth. You can keep your chicken soup; I’ll take the salty, mushiness of those Russian dumplings on my sore throat any day.

The afternoon wore on as I did another sauna rotation, and the banya switched into evening mode. While I liked that they chose to turn off the television, I was less enthusiastic about the oboe-clarinet rendition of “Oops, I Did It Again,” that came blaring over the speakers. Nor was I wild about the large man on the roof deck who hung on my arm while weeping openly and lamenting, “Tasha! My Tasha! You look just like her!” (No one needs to feel that much like a Tolstoy character.) And so I made my exit. Maybe I didn’t find the cure for the common cold, but I like to think that I left a few of my sniffles behind as a pool of sweat, and I headed out into the Brooklyn night, more clear-headed and full of dumplings than when I had entered.