The Buena Vista at Hyde and Beach StreetsThe Buena Vista
- Best time
- Mid-morning
- Getting there
- At the end of the Powell–Hyde cable car line
Why it’s in the log
Irish coffee was born at Foynes, the flying-boat terminal near what's now Shannon Airport, where the chef Joe Sheridan is usually credited with it. The Buena Vista is where it crossed the Atlantic. The San Francisco Chronicle travel writer Stanton Delaplane drank one at Shannon, came home and spent hours with the owner, Jack Koeppler, trying to recreate it — they nearly passed out in the process — and the café started serving it on 10 November 1952.
Delaplane kept mentioning it in his column, and Sheridan himself later came to work at the Buena Vista. The place opened in 1916, as a saloon on the ground floor of a boarding house.
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