Opinions on Lavazza beans.
Abroad, in some of the strange countries in which I (and you) work, they are gold dust, nectar, sublime, and exceedingly welcome. Sometimes, I have been known to whimper with sounds of pure inarticulate happiness when I see their over-priced little selves on the shelves of a small, specialist store in say, a PX, or a side street in a battered and ancient capital city.
This is because conditions can be challenging in such places, and many of these societies have little to no tradition of making good coffee - in other words, beggars can't be choosers and we are - or, I am - damned glad to be able to lay hands on anything that resembles - and offers the chance of obtaining - decent coffee.
I'm with
@Shrink; given a choice, I would usually opt for Illy beans.
However, at home, my standards can be more demanding, or a lot more exacting, and I am in a position to seek them out, so I tend to order my coffee beans from small, specialist roasters, where the roasting will have been done very recently, and the beans themselves may well have come from some small, high quality, possibly organic, farm in - say - the Ethiopian Highlands.
