by Kerry Michael Wood

Created on: January 09, 2010

The Buena Vista is a San Francisco restaurant and bar famous for its Irish Coffees. Purportedly the home-bred coffee and Irish whiskey mixture was invented there in 1952. The owner of the bar challenged columnist and regular customer Stanton Delaplane to re-create the coffee drink that both had enjoyed in the bar of Ireland’s Shannon airport. Experimentation began.

 They eventually got the coffee brew and whiskey flavor they sought, but the topping was an ongoing problem. The whipped cream kept sinking to the bottom and mixing itself instead of sitting aloft as a cool, white coating through which the hot drink could be sipped and cooled enough for comfortable quaffing.

 They discovered that the cream had to be aged for 48 hours, then whipped to the exactly desired consistency in order to float as they wanted it to. More than a half century later, the procedure continues, and the recognizably shaped 10 oz.glasses are still being filled and foamed by the thousands daily. Especially in the evening hours after the kitchen has closed and the BV has turned into a crowded “body shop” where people go to meet people.

 I started going whenever I could afford it in 1959-62. Fresh out of college, I was teaching English, French, and basketball in a private school on the San Francisco Peninsula. At that time, the Irish Coffees cost 60 or 65 cents. You don’t want to know today’s price. The mob of sitting and standing people was consistently well beyond fire department maximum from 9 o’clock on.  Mary the barmaid would elevate her drink tray above her head and scream, “Lemme through, please.” The throng would suck in their stomachs to give her passage. I never saw her spill a drink. She once told me that she would wake herself up in bed at night shouting that sentence and banging her right arm on he headboard.

 The BV is located on the corner of Hyde and Beach Streets at the end of the Hyde St. cable car line. Aquatic Park is straight ahead and a right turn on Beach or Jefferson Streets will take you to Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39.

 One night I was at the Buena Vista with a date who would eventually become my wife. I think we had gone there after attending a performance of the SF Symphony. At any rate, the place was as crowded as always.

 We made our way to a relatively empty spot toward the bar’s rear, ordered drinks, and were eventually addressed by a handsome gentleman, some

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