Saveur is one among many “gourmet” food, wine, and travel magazines (as much as we hate that hackneyed 80′s word) — but with a specific focus on international cuisines. “Saveur” being French for “flavor”. Now whether “Saveur Sav” would be a clock-and-beret-wearing member of France’s answer to Public Enemy is still up for debate. (Oui, garçon!) But the cover story for their latest (October ’08) issue is “The Breakfast Issue.” And while many of us will take issue that “coffee: it’s not just for breakfast anymore,” they feature a series of articles on coffee in the print magazine and as Web exclusives.

The main print article reviews nine different coffees from nine different specialty roasters, representing a rather broad spectrum of roasted coffee available for home brew: 9 Great Coffees – Saveur.com. And we sure do mean “broad”. It includes the usual suspects — the likes of Counter Culture, Stumptown, Intelligentsia, and 49th Parallel. But there’s also the unorthodox choice of traditionalists Sant’Eustachio il caffè and even the “mass production” coffees of Green Mountain and Peet’s.

On one end of the spectrum they’ve got Newman’s Own Organics, and at the other end they’ve got Intelligentsia’s Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda (a batch of which we reviewed last year as roasted by Peet’s). Though to once again invoke the ever-tiresome wine analogy, we’ve noticed a trend where Esmeralda has become something of the Silver Oak cab of the coffee world: i.e., a great product, but one burdened with a status symbol brand name that people commonly latch on to when they know little else about the beverage. (Well, at least it isn’t kopi luwak.)

In Saveur.com’s online exclusives, they review an additional 14 coffees (More of Our Favorite Roasts – Saveur.com) and offer a coffee glossary (A Glossary of Coffee Terminology – Saveur.com). There’s even a brief interview/book promotion piece from Counter Cult member and Third Wave choir girl, Michaele Weissman: A Flawless Cup – Saveur.com.

On the heel’s of Chicago’s informal crowning as America’s caffeine capital, today’s Chicago Tribune published an article that provided a light, unscientific, comparative review of 32 different take-out coffee offerings in the Chicago area: Know your Joe — chicagotribune.com. Instead of the single espresso, the yardstick used at CoffeeRatings.com, the Tribune based their evaluations on the 12-ounce house blend drip coffee.

The top finishers in their analysis included the following:

• Metropolis Coffee Co.
• Intelligentsia
• Coffee Beanery Ltd.
• Allegro at Whole Foods
• Illy
• Peet’s Coffee
• Julius Meinl

It took a moment for me to dig up an online version, but here it is. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the March 2006 issue of Food & Wine Magazine has a special report on coffee: An Obsessive’s Guide to Coffee | Food & Wine.

The editors apparently “spent 410 man-hours tasting 157 coffees and testing 67 coffeemakers (not to mention 10 grinders) to find the best of the best.” However, as this writer can tell you with ample first-hand evidence, that’s just scratching the surface.

Take their Top U.S. Coffee Bars list. It includes a number of the “usual suspects”. But there are many conspicuous absences. They include Ritual Roasters in their raves. Yet they fail to even mention Ritual’s root inspiration and idols: Stumptown Coffee of Portland, OR (though they do mention their coffee, but not the café, in the print version of the article).

I sense that they never veered off the beaten path in major U.S. cities. Honolulu Coffee Company? Never heard of it. This explains other notable omissions, even for just the Bay Area, such as Barefoot Roasters of San Jose and Flying Goat of Healdsburg and Santa Rosa. And while Metropolis Coffee Company in Chicago makes a very good espresso, they aren’t in the same class as Café Organica right here in San Francisco proper.

And before you attempt to make the argument that their list weights a café’s ambiance, Blue Bottle Coffee on Linden St. has the ambiance of a garage sale.

Some of the other categories where they list their favorites include: The Best Drip Machines, Go-To Grinders (my Mazzer Mini thanks them for the honor), and The Best Espresso Machines.

I’m glad to see that F&W sought out 1st-line Equipment for some of their espresso equipment. It still disappoints me that so-called gourmet shops, such as Williams-Sonoma, consider themselves to be purveyors of “high end” home espresso equipment, and yet they sell nothing I would consider buying for myself.

Every once in a while I have the privilege of visiting some place else. Eventhough American cities are becoming more and more homogenized, not everything is a Starbucks. When it comes to espresso, Chicago has a few notable exceptions that I experienced this year.

Intelligentsia

One of the finest roasters east of Seattle, Intelligentsia even supplies the coffee for Canada’s world-class Caffè Artigiano. Few in the Bay Area realize their preeminent status as a roaster when they saddle up to any one of the Specialty’s Cafe & Bakery chains. Probably because Intelligentsia coffee in the hands of Specialty’s staff and equipment is like putting a cello in the hands of Tim McGraw.

Thankfully, Intelligentsia exhibits the clasically trained approach with their coffee at their very own cafés, with one located downtown on Jackston Street and the original café on Broadway Street in the Lakeside District.

The downtown location is inside the historic Monadnock Building, which is complete with a classic dark wood interior adorned with cool retro espresso machine posters.

As for the espresso, it’s some of the best in the U.S.: highly-skilled baristas use beautiful La Marzocco machines to pull a short, potent, but sweet espresso like you may have never had east of Seattle. Certainly one of the best aromas I’ve had off a cup anywhere.

Read the review.

Equally worth a visit is their original Lakeview/Broadway St. location, where their methodical approach to great espresso is even more pronounced … and espresso lovers seem to pack it in all day long. (Read the review.)

Metropolis Coffee Company

Perhaps the only other Chicago area roaster/café worth writing home about is the Metropolis Coffee Company, far up north in the Lakeview District. Sure, the decor is a little worn and the coffee aesthetics could be better, but the espresso is great and it’s a lively literary scene. (And given what everyone will likely be reading, bring your Che Guevara T-shirt for bonus points with the locals.)

Read the review.

Lavazza

Illy no longer seems to be the “in” thing for pre-packaged coffee that Europhiles and restaurants like to brag about these days. That trendy crown — both here and in Rome, mind you — has gone to Torino, Italy’s Lavazza.

Just in time for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino (a grossly underrated city, btw, and one of my favorite escapes from tourists when in Italy), Lavazza has brought their high-end chain café concept to the U.S. this year. Modeled after the original Lavazza Caffè, the excellent San Tommaso café in Torino, the decor of these chains brings a modern industrial chic to the States.

As always, here: so what about the coffee? Well, some coffee lovers in the know will tell you that Lavazza strikes people as an “either-or” taste — you either like it or you don’t. I’m one of the few coffee snobs that falls in the “like it” camp — at least for pre-packaged coffee.

That said, I’m not impressed with the standards at this Chicago café — as I’ve had arguably better espresso from their beans in San Francisco at the humblest of places. More concerning is that I expected their standards to improve after reviewing them soon after they first opened. Yet upon my revisit earlier this week, I found their espresso to be more watery and less flavorful than before.

Read the review.

Well, I suppose that won’t necessarily stop the trend mavens from accessorizing with the Lavazza logo.

Happy New Year, all!