Recipe of the Week: Irish Coffee

Buena Vista's Irish Coffee - San Francisco

The origin of the Irish coffee is highly disputed and there are different variations of coffee cocktails which pre-dates the now classic Irish Coffee by at least 100 years.

The original Irish coffee was (according to sources) invented and named by Joe Sheridan, a head chef at Foynes. Foynes' port was the precursor to Shannon International Airport in Western Ireland and the drink was conceived after a group of American passengers disembarked from a Pan Am flight on a miserable winter evening in the 1940s. Joe added whiskey to the coffee to warm the passengers. After the passengers asked if they were being served Brazilian coffee, Joe told them it was Irish coffee.

A travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle brought Irish coffee to the U.S. after drinking it at Shannon Airport, when he worked at the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco in 1952. The bar owners Jack Koeppler and George Freeberg tried to recreate the Irish method for floating the cream on top of the coffee, sampling the drink one night until they nearly passed out.

I've had a few Irish Coffees at the Buena Vista, one of my favorite places in San Francisco.

Enjoy!

Stacy

Irish Coffee - courtesy of the Buena Vista in S.F.

Ingredients

• some hot water
• six ounces of hot, fresh brewed coffee
• two cocktail sugar cubes
• a jigger (or shot) of your favorite Irish whiskey
• fresh (preferably homemade) whipped cream

Directions

• To start off, you will need to fill your empty glass with the hot water to preheat the glass. After you fill it, let it preheat the glass for a few seconds and then proceed to dump the water out.
• Pour the freshly brewed coffee into the glass until it is about three quarters of the way filled. Then, place the two cocktail sugar cubes into the mix. Stir the mixture until the sugar cubes have dissolved.
• Add the shot or jigger of your favorite Irish whiskey into the coffee and sugar mix. Stir again. Then using a warm spoon, flip it over, and let the homemade whipped cream carefully slide over the spoon’s back and onto your Irish coffee mixture. You want to make sure that the whipped cream does not break into the Irish coffee’s surface.

Recipe courtesy of the Buena Vista