Cup after cup, cafes deliver their goods.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the last in our "Ten Cups" series.

In my 10th week of visiting cafes from Florence to Vida, I find myself nestled into a corner of Cafe Zenon, observing the lunch crowd while sipping Santa Barbara Seafood Chowder.

You won't find that on the menu at Eat at Joe's or the Stockman's Cafe or any of the other places I've been to since Oct. 16. In fact, you won't find a lot of Zenon stuff - white-shirted servers, IKEA-esque lights and polite sips of Chardonnay - at the others.

The Zenon is to the nine other cafes what a semi-formal party is to a street dance. Here, your art isn't going to be a letterman's jacket (Pump Cafe), it's going to be an actual oil painting. Your hot chocolate is going to come in a glass. And when you ask a guy sipping tea if he has a minute to chat, he's not going to bend your ear about last night's windstorm.

He's going to say: "I'd rather not," wish you well and go back to his reading of Daniel Coleman's "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships," in which the author argues that `we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged in a `neural ballet' that connects us brain to brain with those around us.'

Well, apparently not everybody got the memo on the "neural ballet" because this guy isn't dancing. But neither is he being rude; he just wants to be alone. Nothing wrong with that.

The point isn't that Zenon needs to be more like the other cafes; the point is that Zenon is Zenon. Independent. Airy. And highbrow but not uppity.

`It's not `fine dining' but it is `upscale,' ' says owner Brian James. Or as upscale as you get in bluejean Eugene where, of 34 people, one guy is wearing an actual suit.

At other cafes, people arrive with no agenda but are quick to mix it up with others sipping coffee - or whoever's pouring that coffee. The small-talk banter is like conversational hacky sack, each person chipping in when it's his or her turn.

At the Zenon, people come with more defined plans: to meet so-and-so, to talk business, to read a book.

"You wouldn't come here looking to hook up with other people, get to know them and have a casual time," says Mary Moyer, with 22 years of experience, the senior server.

Take John Brown of Evans, Elder & Brown. He doesn't come here to ante-up in a game of small-talk poker.

"I'm either at the Zenon for business or politics," he says. "There are so many conversations going on that people can't eavesdrop easily."

What you learn after nine cups of hot chocolate (and a great smoothie at the hot-chocolate-free Laughing Planet) is that no two cafes are alike.

Each offers something different, be it the location, decor, menu, history, ambiance or cast of characters.

And that's good because we each step into such places with different expectations.

A student who likes UO's Common Grounds might be bored stiff at the Coburg Cafe; what, no Wi-Fi? And the truck driver looking for a quick bite at Country Pride - I-5 at Coburg - isn't likely to be wowed by Laughing Planet's kid-friendly Godzilla collection.

"A customer is satisfied if the experience meets the expectations," Zenon's Moyer says. "If you go to a fancy restaurant and get a hamburger or go to McDonald's and get a steak, you're just as dissatisfied."

But, of course, cafes aren't just places to eat. They're places to belong. To work in an atmosphere that doesn't feel like work. Hear the community scuttlebutt. Network. (Vida Cafe bulletin board: "Firewood. Seasoned." Laughing Planet: "Wanted: Roommate. Vegan preferred.") Debrief after a day at school. And not feel so alone.

I hesitate to call all this "neural ballet"; that won't cut it at, say, the Stockman's Cafe. But Coleman, the author, is right: we are "designed for sociability."

So a raising of my hot-chocolate mug in honor of Lane County's cafes. In a world that so easily divides us, they bring us together.

One order at a time.