Irish Coffee

Hot coffee, Irish whiskey, sugar, and floating cream — Joe Sheridan's 1943 Foynes Airbase creation, perfected at San Francisco's Buena Vista Café from 1952.

Irish Coffee was created by Joe Sheridan, head chef at the flying boat terminal at Foynes Airbase on the River Shannon in County Limerick, Ireland, in 1943. Foynes was the primary transatlantic air terminus for Europe during the early years of commercial aviation — the terminal through which passengers flying between Europe and North America passed on the long, cold, and often turbulent flying boat journeys of the era. On a winter night when a transatlantic flight turned back due to severe weather and the chilled, exhausted passengers returned to the terminal, Sheridan improvised a warming drink from coffee, Irish whiskey, and sugar, then floated fresh cream on top. When an American passenger asked if it was Brazilian coffee, Sheridan reportedly told him it was Irish coffee. The drink remained a regional specialty until 1952, when Stanton Delaplane, a travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, encountered it and brought the recipe back to San Francisco, working with Jack Koeppler, the owner of the Buena Vista Café on Beach Street near Fisherman's Wharf, to recreate the floating cream technique. Koeppler and Delaplane reportedly spent weeks perfecting the method, eventually discovering that slightly aged cream whipped to a specific consistency would float on the surface rather than sinking. The Buena Vista claims to have served its first Irish Coffee on November 10, 1952, and continues to serve thousands of the drink daily. Irish Coffee is an IBA Contemporary Classic.