Beyond Starbucks: Mexico City cafes serve up ambience, more bean for the buck.

It's been a year since Starbucks launched its invasion of Mexico, appropriately opening its premiere outlet beside the U.S. Embassy, so foreign service staff could sidle over for a double latte and bask in the airport terminal atmosphere.

Branches have since popped up in Polanco, at the airport and at strategic malls around town. Apparently responding to CEO Howard Schultz's promise to bring Mexicans "the kind of coffee experience they deserve,'" Mexico City residents have been flocking to the Seattle-based chain for frappuccinos and lattes, as if a decent cup of java were a novelty in this coffee-exporting land.

Why has Starbucks chosen Mexico City for its latest round of expansion?

Schultz has bluntly stated the chain would find a market niche by bringing quality coffee to Mexican consumers. "The reason coffee consumption is not as strong in this country as others is that people have not been given the kind of coffee experience they deserve," Schultz said.

Aside from the unwarranted dose of arrogance detected in this statement, it betrays more than a little ignorance about the situation in Mexico City. Capitalinos" have long embraced the virtues of a well-rounded cup of java, filling elegant cafes long before folks in the U.S. Northwest learned how to pronounce macchiato.

FIDEL'S FAVE 

It is true that many Mexican cafes, especially those pretending to be American coffee shops, seem completely indifferent to the preparation of the beverage, and coffee aficionados are often disappointed by the weak, insipid brew that's served in such places. But as in Seattle, discriminating java hounds know where to look. Any of the following places brew a satisfying cup of coffee, and most deliver more bean for the buck than Starbucks. And while the Starbucks chain puts a high priority on ambience, Mexico City's traditional cafes often exude far more charm than a couple of armchairs and sofas can provide.

A landmark in the historic center, Cafe La Habana breathes history. The cafe opened right after the punishing earthquake of 1957, which toppled the Angel of Independence. The big airy hall is almost always crowded with journalists, professors, foreign tourists, families and retired businessmen, sipping a cappuccino (served in a small glass with wire handle) or cafe americano in a classic white china cup. The coffee flows continuously from a pair of vintage machines that take up most of one counter. Sure, the service often crawls, but La Habana's veteran wait staff is simply conforming to the unhurried pace of the establishment, a place where deals are made, ideas are hashed out and relationships are developed in the stimulating atmosphere only a good cup of coffee can provide.

Legend says that Fidel Castro plotted tactics at Cafe La Habana with Che Guevara prior to the Cuban revolution, though La Habana habitues differ over the chronology of the Cuban leader's appearance. Some say he hung out there as a law student in the late 1950s. But semi-retired journalist Ruben Garcia Mares insists Castro showed up after the revolution to meet with his old friends Hermilo Abreu, a journalist at the newspaper El Popular, and Vicente Lombardo, a leader of the Partido Popular Socialista, the headquarters of which were across the street at the time.

In any case, for nearly half a century La Habana has been a haunt of reporters and editors. Located at the corner of Morelos and Bucareli, it's in the heart of the newspaper district. El Universal, Ovaciones, the sports paper Esto and La Prensa are all in the neighborhood; others have moved on or folded. Garcia Mares is a typical patron. He spent 40-odd years at the Diario de Mexico and Extra. Politicians and celebrities are also frequent visitors, and it remains the place to catch the buzz on the la test political scandal.

ISLAND OF CULTURE IN A RETAIL SEA

Cafeteria Gabi's is a polished gem in the midst of an otherwise nondescript neighborhood of hairdressers, parking lots and convenience stores just east of the Zona Rosa. It sits across from an absurd building facade, a replica of the Statue of Liberty's head that crowned a now-shuttered strip club. A small and intimate place, Gabi's overflows with customers at certain hours of the day (after 6 p.m. tables are scarce), when conversation competes with the whooshing of steam through its polished machine.

The java theme spills over to the decor. Not just a cafe, Gabi's is a gallery of coffee art, and a panoply of antique coffee gadgets line the shelves. There are photos of red beans ready to be picked, coffee cartoons, a sketched portrait of a cool cat with coffee and a cigarette, a throwback from the days when a cup of coffee without a smoke was unthinkable.

Cafe Gran Premio, at the corner of Antonio Caso and Sadi Carnot in the old theater district of Colonia San Rafael, is another long-standing java institution with a neighborhood feel. People trickle in all afternoon, and by 5 p.m. it's full of chattering families, elderly couples and solitary newspaper readers, who sit at simple tables between mirror-paneled columns.

On the counter is an ancient cash register, a scale for weighing bulk coffee, a big grinder and a La Pavoni machine, probably brought over from Italy by the cafe's original owner, Luis Fernando Liguori. Beans from Oaxaca and Chiapas are prominently displayed. A girl in a maroon apron steams a glass of milk to a froth, then measures a shot of espresso into it for cafe lechero. Unlike La Habana and Gabi's, this is not a restaurant; only pastries are served. The cheesecake is popular, and there are freshly baked banderillas (glazed, crumbly stick-like pastries) and almond cookies.

ROMA RENDEZVOUS

Some of Mexico City's earliest cafes were run by Chinese immigrants, and capitalinos still flock to places like Bisquets Obregon in the Roma neighborhood, not for Chinese food, but for the "Chinese-style" coffee and biscuits. In these establishments, a kind of concentrated coffee essence is poured into your glass to the desired strength. The server then fills the glass to the brim with hot milk.

True coffee connoisseurs, however, avoid the chinos, saying the coffee essence is nothing more than highly concentrated Nescafe. Harry Porter, a Texan who has adopted Mexico City as his home, is the sort of aficionado who carries his own coffee-making supplies on the road to ensure he gets his fix of quality java. Cafe de Carlo is the only place in town that meets his high standards.

"Carlos has criteria for coffee," Porter says, referring to the owner of the Roma neighborhood establishment, who started his career as a coffee barista at Gabi's. "Coffee is roasted there at the cafe, and they know how to roast it. He trains his baristas and keeps them for a while. And they use an old-style manual machine, which makes better coffee if you know how to work it."

Located at the ground level of a Porfiriato-era mansion at Orizaba 87 in the Roma neighborhood, this unassuming sidewalk care is a haven for mavens like Porter. The tree-lined section of the Roma's "cultural corridor" suggests a Parisian thoroughfare. There are just a handful of tables, usually occupied by artists, imellcctuals and other oddballs. The waif-like waitresses fit right in. Readers need not feel so strange in this environment and there's usually someone with his head buried in a book. The usual pastries are available but they'll also prepare an omelet, burger or plate of papaya for you.

WORKING-MAN CUPS

Farther south along the Orizaba corridor is Los Enanos de Tapaneo (The Dwarves of the Loft), a gallery, music club and cafe rolled into one. The centerpiece of this atmospheric space is a maroon Victoria Arduino machine, circa 1946. Plenty of bohemian types, as well as ordinary folks, sit at funky red tables for an espresso or Tapanco coffee (a cappuccino-chocolate combo sprinkled with cinnamon). A spiral staircase leads to a more secluded loft level (el tapanco). There's always good .jazz or blues on the stereo, and Los Enanos hosts live bands on Thursday and Friday evenings.

The cafe's odd name can be traced back to the currency devaluation of the early 1980s, when former President Jose Ldpez Portillo used the obscure term as a putdown for striking workers, who he claimed liked to make noise but never followed through on their rhetoric. As a gesture of solidarity with Mexican laborers, cafe owner Raul took the contemptuous phrase and turned it into a badge of honor.

POLITICALLY CORRECT COFFEE

Like the Roma neighborhood, nearby Condesa is a center of cafe life in the capital. Its most established cafe, as well as the hippest place in town for a coffee break is Cafe La Selva, located in the heart of the district, on Vicente Suarez across from the market. It's a place to see and be seen, and models and television personalities are occasionally spotted slurping a latte at the high tables on its front terrace.

La Selva is possibly Starbucks' closest competitor. Like the Seattle company, it's a chain with more than a dozen branches throughout Mexico City--the latest one just set up in the patio of a colonial building at Calle Bolivar 31 in the center--as well as in Cuernavaca and San Crist6bal de las Casas. The Mexican coffee chain has even established beachheads in Atlanta and Barcelona.

As Seattle is Starbucks' spiritual birthplace, La Selva originated in San Cristobal, and they purchase their certified organic coffee directly from small-scale indigenous growers in the Chiapas highlands, making it the politically correct choice for coffee consumers in Mexico. Other similar cafes (Cafe de Nuestra Tierra, Finca Santa Veracruz) have sprung up, claiming a similar direct connection with growers.

SIPPIN' IN FRIDA'S HOOD

Consistent with its role as Mexico City's leisure zone, Coyoacan boasts perhaps the highest concentration of cafes in the city. Cafe El Jarocho is an obligatory stop on any visit to the southern district. The original branch is at Cuauhtemoc 134, a block north of the Plaza Hidalgo. As there's no seating inside, people sip their coffee standing in the street or sitting on the metal benches that extend along the curb. Other carry their styrofoam cups to the nearby plaza.

Gil Romero and his wife Bertha Paredes opened El Jarocho in 1953, and the cafe just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Don Gil grew his own coffee and ran a beneficio de cafe (coffee mill) in Coatepec, in the highlands of Veracruz, before moving to the capital. Originally a general store, in the 1960s E1 Jarocho became a unique outlet for Coatepec coffee. The Coyoacan landmark now serves around 4,000 cups a day, going through some 140 kilos, according to Victor Miguel Romero, one of Don Gil's six sons who now run the business. They have their own warehouse in Coyoacan where they store 500 70-kilo sacks to supply their seven outlets around the capital.

"We are pioneers," Victor Miguel Romero boasted, claiming to have started the first coffee bar as opposed to cafe, in Mexico, a place where people could simply grab a cup and go along their merry way. During the 1990s, such places started popping up all over, but El Jarocho was the first, and the family calls it "a reference point, a meeting place, an age-old tradition."

It's an eclectic mix that lines up for their Veracruz java. Hippies, delivery boys, writers, students, couples, farmers, salesmen with their valises, beautiful young women with their foreign boyfriends, schoolboys with their morns. The young man at the counter serves five cappuccinos to an elderly woman in a black cardigan, setting them up on a tray made front a halved milk carton. A couple of kids stand transfixed at the doughnut case. Their morn asks, "What color do you want?" They choose chocolate. Meanwhile, a violin-jarana duo show up and play sones huastecas.

Despite the hordes that file in daily, El Jarocho still feels like a neighborhood store, cluttered with the usual religious icons and photos of friends. Its layout is fairly straightforward: a big shiny roaster, a case of doughnuts, a counter where a pair of friendly boys set up cappuccinos and cortados. Periodically, one of them empties a sack of beans into the roaster, and the aromatic smoke wafts down Calle Cuauhtemoc.

Prices are ridiculously low: A cappuccino costs six pesos, a Jarocho (strong cappuccino) is seven pesos. There are all kinds of doughnuts: chocolate, glazed, nut and those braided glazed items called trenzas, as well as amaranth muffins. The branch around the corner makes very good tortas for under 10 pesos apiece.

GLOBAL BLEND

Elsewhere in Coyoacan, El Mundo de Cafe (Centenario 33) has coffee from Kenya, Costa Rica, Colombia, Sumatra and, of course, Java, in addition to Oaxaca and Chiapas blends. Conversation and laughter set the tone in this urbane environment. Under a handsome wood-beam ceiling, patrons sit at a long L-shaped counter, chatting, scanning newspapers or studying while sipping a cafe cortado or mocha. Via dei Corsi, at the rear of the Italian Cultural Institute on Calle Francisco Sosa is not a cafe per se, but an Italian grocery store that happens to have a small Illy espresso maker. This machine produces the kind of coffee you'd find in any sidewalk joint in Rome, barely covering the bottom of the cup but packing a concentrated jolt. A delightful back patio, with three or four tables under the shade of an imposing royal palm provides a tranquil setting for an extended coffee break.

Its not hard to see that care culture--and a quality "coffee experience"--is as much a Mexican tradition as tortillas and maize. Starbucks imperialists may well find a niche within this milieu--Mexicans are always eager to consume anything American--but rather than trendsetters, they're latecomers.

Daniel C. Schechter is a guidebook author and freelance travel writer.