I just read the artice in the USA (slow travellers) link to the NY Times, re: espresso.
So, now that I know that it is a problem to duplicate the espresso we had in Italy, any suggestions.
I was about to buy a new machine. We looked at the very expensive Capresso, and the Nespresso machines and had samples at William Sonoma but they were "not great".
Much as we would like to have a great espresso now and then, by the time you fly to Rome the yearning has subsided. (to say nothing of spending 9 hours in the plane and catching a cold from the person behind us who was coughing and spluttering the whole trip)

I am almost embarrassed to say this, but we have one of those outrageously expensive Capresso machines. We saw them in Switzerland. You pour water in one side, beans in the other and just press a button for a Swiss style espresso. It grinds the beans and makes the coffee at high pressure.

You can set it to more or less water - so you can make a real espresso, but we like it with more water - so you end up with a small half cup of coffee. Good and strong. We almost bought one in Switzerland (the people who owned the apartments we stayed at in Kandersteg had one) - but would have had to deal with the different electricity. When we got home, we found the Capresso in our local cooking store.

I love it for coffee, but sometimes do miss the regular drip coffee - but we get that when we go out.

I had to write up a page of documentation for using it for our housesitters. It is a bit complicated. I never use it for steaming milk, but you can do that.

We sprung for a "chrome peacock" .... AKA the La Pavoni Europiccola espresso maker. Bought it at the duty-free in Rome for less than $375 dollars, by far the best price we found. It's sold "on line" for more than $500 bucks.

This is the antithesis of the no-brainer autobrew espresso machine we replaced. The La Pavoni is completely manual -- you wait for the water to heat in the boiler then you lift the lever and force the water through the grounds. Great training for a career at Starbucks. Because it's manual you can allow tremendous pressure to build in the boiler, then control how fast the water passes through the ground coffee.

It took us a full weekend of expermenting with different coffees, grinds, how firmly to pack the filter holder, how much pressure to allow to build, etc... to finally get a cup that at least approached what you can find at any random Autogrille in Italy. Kind of a pain "ma vale la pena." Once you master the machine, the La Pavoni kicks out good coffee. The delicious, bubbly "crema" that is so difficult to achieve with most autobrews is your reward once you master the intricacies of La Pavoni. And the "cappucino automatic" attachment spits perfectly frothed milk into your cup, if you want to go that route.

Clean up is a bear. We keep Q-tips in a kitchen drawer in order to properly clean all the nooks and crannies of the machine. Still, it's a beautiful piece of chrome-plated Italian design and always draws a "wow -- what's that?" from first-time visitors to our home.

"Il caffe', per essere buono, deve essere nero come la notte, caldo come l'inferno e dolce come l'amore"
-- Bakunin, "Life of a Revolutionary"