This has to be some sort of world record! Famed bartender Paul Nolan of San Francisco's Buena Vista Café has made 5 million Irish coffees.
One of the most famous places in the United States to get an Irish coffee is San Francisco's Buena Vista Café. With good reason - they've served up approximately 40 million Irish coffees since 1952.
Irish coffee was invented by Joseph Sheridan in 1942 to welcome Americans at Foynes Airport in Limerick.
A San Francisco Chronicle travel writer, Stanton Delaplane, brought the recipe back to the U.S. and the delicious tipple was first served at the Buena Vista on November 10, 1952.
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Having worked at the Fisherman's Warf establishment since 1977, Paul Nolan is responsible for about 5 million of those 40 million Irish coffees.
He recently shared his story - and some of his secrets - with the San Francisco Gate.
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According to his interview with Gareth Marek, Nolan first became associated with the Buena Vista in 1973, when he began working as a bouncer after graduating from UC Berkeley. His brother Larry (who also still works there) joined him and soon they were both working behind the bar.
After getting a master's degree in business from Queens University in Ontario Canada, Nolan briefly worked for Hyatt Hotels before having a revelation that would shape the course of the rest of his life:
"It was sort of a temporary job until I found something more aligned with what I wanted to do. And that was 43 years ago. I realized I was no longer going to look for another job around 1982," he told the Gate. "I felt like, I don't want to quit this. We're an old school bar, you don't try to make it too fufu or too crazy. You don't try to say, 'oh, what's the hippest thing' and this is what we're going to do. What we do well is Irish coffee, we're world-famous in that. We do it so well that we sell as much as we do."
Since that fateful day, Nolan has become the world-eminent maker of Irish coffees. To the degree that makes 25 at a time and doesn't even notice when celebrities like Ted Danson come in to taste one of his famous concoctions.
How exactly does he do it? According to the Gate:
"He rinses all 25 glasses with scalding hot water from a coffee pot, drops a pair of white sugar cubes into every glass, then comes scalding hot coffee, some extremely vigorous spoon swirling, and finally the healthiest of pours of Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey, plus a house-whipped heavy cream topper."
To top it all off, he makes those 25 Irish coffees at a time wearing a white tuxedo jacket that somehow remains pristine.
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Clearly, the man is a legend.
Where did you have the best Irish coffee of your life so far? Tell us in the comment section or on Facebook.
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