↑ This is Mike Cooper’s preparation of Irish Coffee – a warming, tasty delight made with Irish whiskey, coffee, brown sugar, and lightly whipped cream.
Irish Coffee has a history on the Left Coast. Along with New England, another primary root of our culture is Appalachia, which in turn has roots in Ireland and Scotland. Small wonder that the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco has served tens of millions of Irish Coffees on foggy days and nights.
According to Wikipedia:
Stanton Delaplane, a travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, brought Irish coffee to the United States after drinking it at Shannon Airport, when he worked with the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco to start serving it on November 10, 1952, and worked with the bar owners Jack Koeppler and George Freeberg to recreate the Irish method for floating the cream on top of the coffee, sampling the drink one night until he nearly passed out. The group also sought help from the city’s then mayor, George Christopher, who owned a dairy and suggested that cream aged at least 48 hours would be more apt to float. Delaplane popularized the drink by mentioning it frequently in his travel column, which was widely read throughout America. In later years, after the Buena Vista had served, by its count, more than 30 million of the drinks, Delaplane and the owners grew tired of the drink. A friend commented that the problem with Irish coffee is that it ruins three good drinks: coffee, cream, and whiskey.