Patrick Comerford
Visitors who stay in the Rectory in Askeaton enjoy visiting Foynes and the Flying Boat and Maritime Museum, which is just 12 km from here, a 15-minute drive.
For many, when they visit Foynes, it’s a must to find out about the story about Irish Coffee.
The displays in the museum boast that this was the drink of the stars at Foynes, including Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller.
Although I never developed a taste for whiskey. But the flying boats and Foynes are closely linked to Irish coffee, which many visitors believe is an Irish tradition, although it only dates back to the 1940s.
In 1943, Brendan O’Regan opened a restaurant and coffee shop in the Foynes terminal building, and it soon earned a reputation as one of the best restaurants in Ireland. The Chef Joe Sheridan, who was from Castlederg, Co Tyrone, was recruited by O’Regan to run the kitchen.
Late one night in the winter of 1943, a flight left Foynes for New York. But, after flying for several hours in bad weather, the captain decided to return to Foynes to wait for safer conditions. A Morse code message was sent to the Foynes control tower to tell them of the planned return. The staff were called back in and when the plane landed the passengers were brought to the restaurant for food and drink.
When Joe Sheridan was asked to prepare something to warm the weary passengers, he was inspired to put some Irish whiskey into their coffee. One passenger approached the chef and thanked him for the wonderful coffee, asking if he used Brazilian coffee. Joe jokingly answered, ‘No, it was Irish coffee!’
A few weeks later, Chef Sheridan knocked on O’Regan’s office door. He showed O’Regan his new drink in a stemmed glass and asked, ‘How about that for eye appeal?’
O’Regan answered, ‘Genius, Chef!’
And so Irish coffee was born.
It continued to be served to passengers at Foynes and visitors can still enjoy Irish Coffee in the Irish Coffee Centre at Foynes.
Joe Sheridan was born in 1909 in Castlederg, Co Tyrone, one of six sons. His family moved to Dublin after his father died. He worked in a restaurant in Dublin until 1943, when he applied for the job of chef at the airport in Foynes.
Sheridan’s crisp, concise application to Brendan O’Regan was simple and straight-forward: ‘Dear Sir, I’m the man for the job. Yours sincerely, Joe Sheridan.’
O’Regan later said that it was the impudence of Sheridan’s application that made him decide to arrange an interview. He hired Sheridan after they met.
But what happened to Joe Sheridan?
When Foynes closed in October 1945, Joe Sheridan and the rest of the catering staff moved across the Shannon Estuary to the new airport at Rineanna, Co Clare, now Shannon International Airport. There he continued to serve his Irish Coffee.
Stan Delaplane, a well-known journalist and travel writer, was travelling through Shannon Airport in 1951 when he was served an Irish coffee. By then, it had become the traditional welcoming drink at the airport.
When Delaplane returned to San Francisco, he told his friend Jack Koeppler of the Buena Vista café about the drink. The staff at Buena Vista tried to reproduce the drink, but it never came out quite right. Each time they tried it, they had a problem with the cream and could not get it to stay floating on the top.
Koeppler offered Sheridan a position at Buena Vista in 1952. The chef decided to emigrate to America and accept the job. Delaplane continued to popularise the drink by mentioning it frequently in his travel column.
Joe Sheridan died 10 years later in 1962, and is buried at Oakland Cemetery outside San Francisco.
Of course, although I never developed a taste for whiskey, I enjoy a double espresso each time I bring visitors to Foynes.
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