Just in time for a recession in which Starbucks gets used as a primary example of the kind of luxury people will no longer be willing to shell out for, coffee joints have started getting fancier, and more expensive, about the way they brew coffee.  Intelligentsia got some press and grief (see a response here) for laying in a supply of $11,000 Clover machines and using them to make $4 cups of coffee that take seven minutes.  Just as I was reading about that, a vegetarian coffeehouse opened on Lincoln near Martyrs, bearing the name De.li.cious (which comes awfully close to del.icio.us, the former impossible-to-spell-right name of a “social bookmarking” service now just called Delicious) and offering, in the $3-4 range, cups of coffee brewed in a thing called a Chemex.

From the name I expected a big fancy machine, gleaming steel and chrome, spitting steam like a Raymond Loewy train engine.  The reality proved to be simple enough to do for yourself; a glass carafe with a funnel mouth into which you set a filter and slowly pour hot water around the edges, thus getting roughly even amounts of water to pass through all the beans, rather than extracting most of your coffee from the ones at the bottom of the filter:

So did it live up to the hype?  Actually, yes, at first anyway.  The cup was subtler, more floral, almost creamy (possibly a projection of the name of the coffee I chose, kurimi); you could taste the point about getting the best flavor from all the coffee in the filter versus overextracting acids from the stuff at the bottom.  Within 20 minutes of going on my way with my paper cup, however, it was just another cup of coffee.  So if you do feel the need to spend $3+ and carefully watch as owner/professional BMX racer Kevin Porter hand-assembles your coffee drip by drip, drink it while you’re there, and fairly quickly, to savor the difference.  Or if you use a French press, you might consider switching to a Chemex of your own (they have them in stock), as it’s no harder to make a cup in your office this way and for me it’s a less oily, more well-rounded cup.

But for me, the real point of this is that when I walk into De.li.cious with my son, who was instantly smitten by their cupcakes baked in ice cream cones, the Chemex process gives me something to shoot the breeze about with Porter or his staff for a few minutes, enjoying the earnest vibe of people who opened a vegetarian coffeehouse in their neighborhood because having one seemed like the most important thing in the world.  $3 or so will get you that and a first-rate cup of coffee, which seems eminently fair to me.

De.li.cious
3827 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago IL 60613
773-477-9840
www.deliciouscafechicago.com