Stanton Hill ("Stan") Delaplane (12 October 1907 – 18 April 1988) was an American travel writer, credited with introducing Irish coffee to the United States.
[1] After drinking Irish coffee at Shannon Airport in Ireland, Delaplane convinced Jack Koeppler, then owner of the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco, to start serving it at his bar.
On November 10, 1952,[3][4] the two spent hours perfecting the Irish method for floating the cream on top of the coffee, reportedly to the point where Delaplane almost passed out on the cable car tracks outside.
[1] In later years Delaplane would write his travel dispatches (which he called "postcards") from his home on Telegraph Hill, finishing them over a martini and cigarettes by the piano at the Washington Square Bar and Grill before sending them to the newspaper building by messenger.
His peculiar magic, which I often probed into and never discovered, was to keep these bare sentences rollicking along in the most effortless way, running as clean as spring water over the bed of a brook.