The 25th of January is Irish Coffee Day and a great occasion to have one. During our trips around the world we’ve tasted several takes on the perfect Irish Coffee as well as variations of the drink. But the one most true to the original might have been the one we had in San Francisco, California. It might come as a surprise, but this is the story of it’s invention and how the original Irish Coffee was carefully interpreted by two guys in California.
It was a cold winter night 1943 in Foyne on the southwest coast of Ireland, Pan Am transatlantic hub for their Flying Boat planes at the time. Joe Sheridan was the chef at the restaurant in the terminal building, regarded as one of the best restaurants in Ireland at the time. A flight had departed from Foyne with New York as the final destination, however after several hours of flight the pilot was forced to return due to bad weather. A morse message was sent to the airport and the staff at the airport was called back to work.
The passengers was brought to the restaurant and Joe Sheridan was asked to serve them food and drinks to get them warm. As he poured them coffee he added some fine Irish Whiskey. When one of the passengers jokingly asked if this was Brazilian coffee Joe replied; no, it’s Irish Coffee. During the following weeks he perfected the drink in a stemmed glass with added sugar and cream. It was added to the menu at the restaurant and when the Foyne closed down in 1945 as the Flying Boats were retired in favor of landbased airplanes and the service moved to Shannon International Airport so did Joe and the drink.
Even though the origin of the Irish coffee is Ireland, one of the closest takes on the original receipt today can be found in San Francisco, California, at the Buena Vista Café. In the early 50’s travelwriter Stanton Delaplane and bartender Jack Koeppler at Buena Vista tried to copy the drink, however they where unable to get it quite right.
Jack didn’t give up and even went to Shannon International Airport to try it out. Upon his return the two continued until they perfected the taste of the drink. The final issue was getting the cream right to make it float, the answer was to age the cream for 48 hours.
Since then the Buena Vista has stuck to that very close imitation. So even if it might not be exactly what a bar in Ireland would serve, or any other bar around the world for that matter, this might actually be closer to the drinks origin than most of them.
The Buena Vista café is situated just a few blocks of Fisherman’s Warf on the corner of Beach and Hyde Street.