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I'm a coffee snob. There, I said it.

In fact, I love great coffee so much that I am on a quest to visit every coffee shop in New York City that ISN'T a large national chain and rank their lattes (my favorite coffee drink). Preference is given to strong coffee.

So far, I've visited 34 shops, with hundreds/thousands (!) more to go; I'll be working on this project for a long time, perhaps forever...

I rank the lattes on a 1-5 scale. Here's what the scale means:

1. Undrinkable: one or two sips and you have to grimly toss it into the garbage, with great disappointment and contempt.

2. Drinkable: Ok, but only if you have no other options (say, if you are stuck at a conference in an obscure city and there are no nearby coffee alternatives).

3. Decent, but nothing that stands out and nothing you would actually seek out.

4. Good

5. Great

Once the coffee receives a ranking of about 4.4 or above, what you've got on your hands is what I call DESTINATION COFFEE: coffee that is so good that you will travel for it. In my case, that could mean, for instance, walking a half hour from the West side of NYC to the East side.

Destination coffee: it's the ever-elusive holy grail.

Here are the GROUND rules (get it?) for the rankings, designed to ensure a standardized, level playing field that gives each latte an equal chance to shine:

Drink: Latte
Milk: Whole milk
Cane sugar: 1 packet
Foam: stiff peaks are the goal (a dead giveaway that a latte will be bad is when the foam is non-existent or very subpar).

For my list, I ultimately decided to include only those places that reach 3.5 or above. Also, note that I refuse to give any latte a 5 since a perfect score implies the impossibility of finding something better – that there is no room for improvement. But I am optimistic that something better is always possible, hence the 4.9 ceiling to my rankings. Overall I am a tough grader.

Note: Many of the coffee shops I visited have more than one location. The location I list below for each shop is the location that I actually visited. Visit each shop's web site to learn if additional locations are available.