Location: Along the Embarcadero

Fisherman’s Wharf, the home of San Francisco’s fishing fleet, has a history dating back to the days when the gold-seeking Argonauts of 1849 turned the Spanish "pueblo" of Yerba Buena into a booming city almost overnight.

The Wharf now rests on land abandoned by gold-seekers heading to the Sierra foothills. Today, this neighborhood is one of San Francisco’s most popular destinations. A long coastal row of seafood restaurants, street vendors and souvenir stores are combined with a major fishing pier.

Cynthia Traina, of Alioto’s Restaurant, a San Francisco landmark since 1932, said that the wharf has predominantly been a tourist neighborhood, thus making it hard to pin down one drink for the area. Would it be a drink favored among the fishermen who still use the wharf, or a drink favored by the tourists who shop at the wharf? Both would be different responses.

Among the fishermen, Traina says it would have to be a glass of Chianti wine. The Wharf was first settled by Italian fishermen who dominated this industry since the 1880s.

A favorite drink among the tourists of Fisherman’s Wharf is Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista Bar.

Everyday the Buena Vista doles out gallons of their private label Irish Whiskey. The 1997 figures of 20,639 quarts of Irish Whiskey, 6,762 pounds of coffee and a like amount of cream and sugar testify to its popularity. Since its birth in 1952, more than 18 million Irish Coffees have been served with an average of 2,000 a day at the Buena Vista.

How did the Irish Coffee come to San Francisco? On the night of November 10, 1952, Buena Vista owner Jack Koeppler was bartending that night and sitting on a bar stool was international travel writer Stanton Delaplane.

Koeppler queried Delaplane about the Irish Coffee that he had tasted at Dublin’s Shannon Airport and since written about in the San Francisco Examiner. Delaplane made it and Koeppler was not impressed -- the cream wouldn’t float.

A pilgrimage was made to Shannon Airport to discover first-hand the true formula for Irish Coffee from the originator, bartender Joe Sheridan. The problem of the sinking cream was taken to then-mayor of San Francisco, George Christopher, who also owned a large dairy. Christopher put his chemists to work and the answer was to "age" the cream for 48 hours, then froth it to the consistency of pancake batter.