By Davy Carren

It’s St. Patrick’s Day — are you looking for Irish coffee? I explored five spots in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, and here is what I found.

Links below will jump to each venue:

• Donahue’s Marina Lounge in San Francisco
• Twin Peaks Tavern in San Francisco
• Freehouse in Berkeley
• Sláinte in Oakland
• The Fat Lady in Oakland

Donahue’s Marina Lounge

2138 Chestnut St., San Francisco
$8 Irish coffee; cash only

Donahue’s Marina Lounge still has a payphone inside the bar, very conspicuously hung on the wall at the end of a bar-length drink ledge (which has about a dozen coat hooks nestled under it) by the front door. And don’t let its location in the midst of Chestnut’s frat-party-central haven fool you, it is absolutely a dive in the best way: a splendid seedy surprise and respite from the more crowded confines and “Fireball Special” elements that surround it.

For $8, the bartender will whip up some cream in a silver blender behind the bar right next to the diner-style coffee pot on a warmer. The cream comes out thick—almost gooey—and it’s very sweet. The coffee is, well, diner coffee, and it’s mixed up briskly with a bar spoon to pulverize the one sugar cube that’s been tossed in the glass. Tullamore Dew is the whiskey of choice here, as it should be, and it didn’t overpower the other ingredients by a long shot. The cream provides a sleek white coating, almost frosting-like in its essence and flavor, as it gently bobs on top.

I gulped down mostly cream on the first sip, which was icing-on-the-icing great, but the next few let the coffee and whiskey through and was balanced and pretty damn pleasant the rest of the way down. I’d recommend sitting by the table by the front window if it’s available. You can sip your drink and watch the Marina denizens stroll by, mostly ignoring this wonderful spot. The regulars are few, but they make up for it with a gently raucous volume of steady banter and great one-liners. And, if you’ve got enough quarters, you can make a call to your bookie on the payphone, and perhaps put it all on another one at this rough-in-a-diamond jewel called Donahue’s.

Twin Peaks Tavern

401 Castro St., San Francisco
$8 Irish coffee; cash only

Above the stained-glass light fixtures that dangle so iconically from the high ceiling there is an upper floor at Twin Peaks Tavern, with an ATM and a small bathroom, where you can sit at round two-seat tables and gaze over all the bar’s action from above, including the bartender in front of the ornately carved wood and gorgeous mirrors of the back bar, possibly in the throes of putting together an Irish coffee or two. And you might notice that they’re using Bushmills as their whiskey, and that the coffee pot’s on a warmer almost hidden next to all the liquor bottles, and that there’s a blender there too, somehow squeezed between it all, and that its whir is barely discernible above the din of the clientele, as this place fills up early and maintains its convivial crowd until closing time most nights.

Twin Peaks Tavern is cash only, and if you give the bartender two twenties by mistake to pay for your $8 Irish coffee, they will definitely point out your mistake to you and hand one of the twenties back. What distinguishes Irish coffee here from others is — of course—the Bushmills. I found it less malty without the woody and golden-barley flavor of Tullamore, and it tag-teamed with the coffee to deliver a turnbuckle drop of bitterness; the cream wasn’t thick or sweet enough to put up much of a fight.

The other easy tell of the drink is that it comes with a thin black straw in it. I tried using this straw at first. Unfortunately, one tends to suck up mostly whiskey on the first few tries with this technique, and anyone who’s ever tried to drink hot coffee through a straw will tell you: don’t drink hot coffee through a straw. So, after abandoning this slim plastic drink-delivery device, I made my way through the drink in the preferred fashion, and I found that it was perhaps a tad tart for my taste, as the cream faded fast and the Bushmills came out ahead throughout the course.

The glasses aren’t preheated (there’s really no time for such things at place with this kind of non-Irish-coffee volume), and there isn’t a whole lot of flair to the technique here. But in the end, without using the straw, the drink was nice and strong and comforting, which is really the main effect one is looking for on a Saturday at 2:45 p.m. in the most historic, important, and prominent gay bar of all the gay bars in the Castro, where the camaraderie and atmosphere and sense of community go hand-in-hand with the enjoyment of the beverages.

Freehouse

2700 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
$11 Irish coffee; cash or credit

Do not order an Irish coffee at Freehouse in Berkeley.

The place is magnificent, with its oversized fireplace and its strange chandeliers, its crossbeam-and-cinnabar ceiling, and black-and-white photos of rebellion adorning the walls. But they don’t know the first thing about making an Irish coffee.

Mine came in a glass with a handle and no base, a splash of Jameson, no sugar cube mixed into the coffee (which, I was assured by the waitress, was just brewed), and the thinnest and most porous dollop of unsweetened cream plopped onto it that I have yet to encounter. It looked like a mocha, but tasted like, well … I’ll just warn you not to find out for yourself. Go with the garlic fries and maybe just a plain coffee, if you can convince them to make a fresh pot.

Sláinte

131 Broadway, Oakland
$12 Irish coffee; cash or credit

Sláinte (apparently it’s pronounced “slawn-cha,” which would’ve been nice to know before I butchered it in front of the bartender and a cadre of regulars) is a classic Irish pub near the Jack London Square end of Broadway in Oakland.

It’s all dark wood and brick, and sports a giant portrait of Oscar Wilde on one entire wall while a James Joyce watercolor adorns a prime spot above the fireplace by the bar. It’s got booths and tables and even some nicely cushioned banquette seating along one side, which is where I stretched out of a windy and tenebrous afternoon to enjoy one of their special Sláinte Irish Coffees: a hearty dose of Powers whiskey, fresh-brewed java from local Bicycle Coffee, Demerara syrup, and fresh whipped cream.

Now this is not your by-the-book traditional Irish coffee, but it is delicious. Demerara is a simple syrup that’s got coarse-grain, pale-amber Demerara sugar instead of white sugar, and it makes a difference as it smoothly and evenly enriches the coffee unlike the sugar-cube method.

The Powers whiskey, on the other hand, gives the drink an astringent tinge that’s like a paludal funk of steam rising up through the locally brewed hot springs to meet the cool fog of the whipped cream, and eventually clear up and enliven the murky bog of my head. Purists insist that the cream on an Irish coffee should never be whipped, but in this particular case I believe them to be grossly mistaken. Along with the Demerara, it was like a decadent dessert with every sip, each of which was consistent all the way through: equal parts sweetened coffee, whiskey, and cream.

And it looks gorgeous in the glass: no frills, elegant, thick layer of cream like meringue on top inveigling you to dive in. It’ll run you $12, but it’s worth it. All in all, a perfect way to spend a dark and stormy Irish-coffee afternoon.

The Fat Lady

201 Washington St., Oakland
$14 Irish coffee; cash or credit

Just down the street (literally one block away) from Sláinte, a paunchy and rugged old dame of a restaurant squats on her worn haunches beneath an opalescent, red-yellow-green, craquel stained-glass sign reading: The Fat Lady.

It was once a brothel and still retains that same ambiance. There is everything to see here. From the many-mirrored walls to the framed portraits of naked, pleasantly corpulent ladies of the night taking up almost every yard of wall space, this time-capsule of a place has a velvet-silk-damask, old-bordello charm that Bella Cora would be proud of.

The rosewood back bar is massive and ornate; replete with curved mirrors under sculpted-arch cutouts, fancy inlays above thick rounded columns, brass statuettes of greek goddesses, and a lavishly decorated, antique, bronze cash register propped between display bottles like a treasure. The ceiling is draped with a surface of black, shiny sequins.

The Fat Lady draws an older crowd, and they’ve taken up most of the dozen or so seats around the bar by the time this here peripatetic Irish-coffee sipper bellies up to it. The lady behind the bar is kind and quick, and soon is going through the preparations, but she’s stalled from sniffing the cream and makes a face like she just got pinched a bit too hard. She tells me she’s going to make a fresh batch, and before long a blender hidden somewhere below the bar is swirling it up. Soon the coffee is poured into the usual small goblet, and she plops in the requisite sugar cube from an objet d’art brass jar on the counter — and then, for some absurd reason, adds another! Then it’s in with the Tullamore Dew and topped off with the cream, as per usual.

The drink comes with a rather thick black straw poked in it. I decide to forgo the straw, and my first sip is sour and acidic. The cream has no sweetness to it. I convince myself to take a few more, and the experience doesn’t get much better. On one sip it’s all sugary coffee, on the next it’s mostly whiskey, and by the third the sourness of the cream is too much. I resolve to set this 14-dollar concoction down on the counter and enjoy the atmosphere — which I do, immensely.

I rest my elbow on the rounded lip of the bar top and sightsee. There’s a service dog resting on floor nearby; a backlit stained-glass sign advertising Old Judge whiskey reigns over the dining tables; and an older couple next to me is slamming dice cups down on the bar in the throes of a rather intense game of Liar’s dice. I visit the bathroom, which is tremendous, with colorful murals of Victorian jezebels plastered on the walls above the toilets.

Back at the bar, I take a longer swallow from my goblet, and this time I get all the flavors at once. Even though the cream is definitely not in top shape, their particularly pedestrian take on this famed beverage (thought not exceptional by any means) is pretty decent. It’s passable.

As the whiskey slugs it out with the pummeling fists of the caffeine’s brawl, I begin to subtly melt into my surroundings, carried away on the perfume of a Gilded Age harlot’s dress, entranced and transposed into a buttery glob of nostalgia for a time I’ve never known. I’m starting to think that this Irish coffee on this dreary weekday afternoon is actually the best one I’ve ever had. Even though it isn’t, this tremendous place sure does make one feel that it is.

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