One of the bartenders at my local tavern is a good cook, and for Saint Patrick's Day she brought corned beef, cooked carrots, mashed potato with cabbage and bacon, and red potato. Someone else brought a Mexican style chicken dish with whole jalapeño peppers, and I contributed my homemade Irish Cream cheesecake that was flavored with Irish cream liqueur and had Irish butter in the crust. The top photo shows my savory lunch plate after I helped myself, and the bottom photo shows my cheesecake before some pieces got eaten and the rest mysteriously disappeared. This was a good and memorable Saint Patrick's Day meal.
Location: Escapade Tavern, 12347 Palm Drive, Desert Hot Springs, California. Date: March 17, 2024.
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This is an adult version of the root beer float consisting of vanilla custard ice cream in a pint of Guinness, that dark creamy beer from Ireland. The float arrived with the ice cream in the bottom of the glass, but as I was photographing it, the spoon started to wiggle and the ice cream floated to the top. The ice cream to Guinness ratio was perfect, and the contrast of the sweet ice cream with the bitter beer was amazing. These could become addictive.
Location: O'Caine's Irish Pub, 36101 Bob Hope Drive, Bldg F, Rancho Mirage, California. Date: October 5, 2022. Yes, this is my third posting of Irish Coffee. When I entered Ska Bar, on Christmas Day, and asked if they had Irish Coffee, Elliot, who is justly proud of his creation, exclaimed, “Best Irish coffee in San Diego!” Wait a moment; can he compete with The Fields? It turned out that he isn't competing at all, because what he's created is not the recipe from Shannon airport in Ireland; it's uniquely his. He uses Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey, as they do at the Buena Vista in San Francisco, but Elliot infuses his with cacao nibs. For his coffee he uses the very local Dark Horse, which is right next door, and for sweetening he uses a light brown sugar syrup. His heavy cream is flavored with Becherovka, a Czech cinnamon liqueur. The cocktail is also dusted with cinnamon. So what about the taste? It's a strong whiskey flavor with chocolate and cinnamon that's quite intense. Best Irish coffee in San Diego? I'd say most unusual and innovative Irish coffee in San Diego. And how about the granite bar?
Location: Ska Bar, 3250 Adams Avenue, San Diego, California. Date: December 25, 2019. For my Irish breakfast at Molly's in Miraflores, I got a nice cuppa tea, a slice of white toast, a slice of Irish soda bread, a breakfast sausage, a slice of spicy blood pudding, three strips of bacon, half a grilled tomato, baked beans, sauteed mushrooms, and a sunny side up egg. And this is the small breakfast! (For the regular breakfast you double everything.) Molly's only serves up the Irish breakfast on weekends, and since I happened to be there then, I took advantage of it. Comforting and tasty.
Location: Molly's Irish Bar & Restaurant, Calle Berlin 172, Miraflores, Lima, Peru. Date: November 24, 2019. Occasionally a dish or a drink merits more than one blog, and that's the case here. A friend of mine, who was in ill health and who liked real Irish coffee, told me to visit the Buena Vista in San Francisco where he thought Irish coffee had been invented. Unfortunately my friend passed away before I got there, but get there I did, and I learned more about this cocktail at this cafe with the nice bay view. There's a plaque outside the cafe that lets you know that this drink was invented at Shannon airport in Ireland, a fact I already knew; what I didn't know was that it was invented during the second world war when fighter pilots needed a shot in their coffee for extra courage. What I also found out from the barman at the Buena Vista is that the sugar cube changes the viscosity of the coffee so that it helps the lightly whipped cream to float. I was also privy to the fact that the Buena Vista uses Tillamore Dew because other Irish whiskeys, like Jameson, are sweeter, and you don't want sweeter because there's already a sugar cube in the coffee. The glasses used for serving Irish coffee are pre-warmed, and there were sixteen on the bar with hot water in them even though the place was unusually quiet. (I was prepared to wait in line, but I didn't have to.) When I ordered a second Irish coffee, the barman announced that “The second one always tastes better.” The first one tasted just fine to me, and I toasted my dear friend Jeff who had passed; on the second one, I toasted Joe Sheridan, the inventor of this fine drink. It's not just coffee and whiskey; it's an art to get the cream just right so that you can enjoy drinking the cocktail through the cream without the cream mixing into the coffee itself. The first Irish coffee in America was served at the Buena Vista in 1952, four years before I was born.
Location: Buena Vista Cafe, 2765 Hyde Street, San Francisco, California. Date: September 17, 2019. The Field in San Diego is where, years ago, I found the directions for making real Irish coffee, and thus I was able to make them for my friend Jeff who was terminally ill but really enjoyed an Irish coffee once in a while, and he was savvy as to what a real one was. He told me they were invented at Buena Vista at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, but I found out that they were really invented at Shannon airport in Ireland, but that the Buena Vista was the first bar in America to make the authentic drink here. The Field is also authentic, but I had a hard time finding it. I walked into two different Irish pubs in the Gaslamp District only to be told that they use canned whipping cream, but they each tried to direct me to The Field, and I finally found it again. You make real Irish coffee by warming a glass and then adding a spoonful of sugar (The Field uses turbinado), Irish whiskey, and hot coffee. You then lightly whip some cream (or have it already handy) and float it on top of the coffee. When you sip the coffee through the cream it's magical; however, it won't work with cream whipped to stiff peaks. The Field garnishes the drink with a clover leaf made of powdered chocolate, but this is optional; you wouldn't want to bother with it at home. Jeff passed away last year, but I had two real Irish coffees (because one was not enough), and I toasted him each time.
Location: The Field Irish Pub, 544 5th Avenue, San Diego, California. Date: July 31, 2019. |
AuthorChef Roland has been a legal resident of seven countries and has travelled in over thirty, documenting food along the way. He currently resides in the desert in Southern California. Categories
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