Kitchen & Coffee Editor
Tomás Saavedra-Lin
AOS · JBF Fellow
Writing about kitchen equipment since 2019
About Tomás Saavedra-Lin
Tomás Saavedra-Lin spent five years on professional restaurant lines — the last three of them at Eleven Madison Park — before leaving in 2019 to write about the equipment he had been using daily. The transition from cook to writer was, in his telling, less a career change than a different way of doing the same job: pay close attention to the tools, defend the choices that hold up, dismiss the ones that don’t.
He joined Top Picks Report in November 2025 to write the kitchen-and-coffee vertical. The pieces he files are short by category-roundup standards — five things, with reasons — and arrive only after he has lived with the picks long enough to have an opinion about the eighth-week-of-daily-use experience, not the first-week’s polish.
Editorial focus
Tomás edits the kitchen and coffee vertical at Top Picks Report. He writes the cast iron, chef’s knife, espresso machine, and home-coffee-equipment picks personally. He also occasionally files cross-vertical pieces in the home-office and travel-coffee corners that touch his beat — the small portable coffee setup for hotels, for example, or the office-desk espresso machine that does not need plumbing.
His test bench is, deliberately, a home kitchen rather than a professional one. He believes the right way to evaluate equipment that is going to be used by home cooks is to use it the way home cooks use it: in a kitchen with one user, no expediter, and the dishwasher that came with the apartment.
Conflicts of interest
Tomás accepts no compensation from cookware brands, knife makers, or coffee-equipment companies. He pays for every piece of equipment that appears in his writing, with the rare exception of a long-term loaner he is asked to evaluate, in which case the loan is disclosed at the bottom of the piece and the equipment is returned within the standard editorial period. He maintains no affiliate accounts. He has no equity in, and accepts no honoraria from, any company whose product appears in his rankings.
Issues by Tomás Saavedra-Lin
Recent work
Top 5 Home Espresso Machines
Five home espresso machines worth committing to in 2026, with the Breville Bambino Plus at the top. Defended where they belong against the temptation to spend more.
Top 5 Cast Iron Skillets
Five cast iron skillets worth owning, with the Lodge 12-inch at the top. Tested for two months in a working home kitchen against the seasoning, sear, and weight criteria that matter.
Top 5 Chef Knives Under $200
Five chef knives under $200 worth committing to, with the Mac Mighty MTH-80 at the top. Tested against the cuts a working home cook actually makes.