For St. Patrick’s Day, L.A.’s finest Irish espresso is at Tom Bergin’s

Contemplate — as one would possibly for St. Patrick’s Day — that humbly scrumptious and eminently traditional cocktail, the Irish espresso.

It’s a deceptively easy drink, but its kind belies a collection of small selections yielding a cocktail larger than the sum of its components. Lately you will discover what is perhaps the fashionable very best of an Irish espresso cocktail at Tom Bergin’s, the historic Irish pub on Fairfax Avenue open since 1936. Brothers Dave and Francis Castagnetti took possession of the bar in late 2019, after the constructing was designated as a historic monument by the Los Angeles Metropolis Council and saved from demolition. “You probably have a neon signal out entrance that claims ‘Home of Irish Espresso,’ you’ve obtained to return appropriate,” laughs Francis Castagnetti.

And are available appropriate they do. Irish coffees have been served in a single kind or one other at Tom Bergin’s for the higher a part of a century, however its present kind is a grasp class in thought-about construction, constructed for repeatability and complexity with delicate trendy updates. The fundamental components embrace espresso, Irish whiskey (Tullamore Dew is the usual pour), a contact of sweetener and textured cream — not fairly whipped however not fairly liquid, and thick sufficient in order to kind a form of layered, sealed float on the high of a tulip glass. Tom Bergin’s serves a number of hundred of the drinks day by day, however on St. Patrick’s Day that quantity explodes into the hundreds.

The Irish espresso’s historical past has Californian roots. Although its origins in County Limerick are the topic of a lot historic disagreement, few would dispute that the drink was popularized on the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco, which serves a number of thousand Irish coffees a day from a recipe that has not modified because the early Fifties. The Buena Vista depends on sugar cubes as a sweetener, and makes use of a proprietary “aged cream” method involving a lot stirring and spooning to attain the proper texture.

At Tom Bergin’s they’ve made a few key tweaks to the tactic, utilizing turbinado easy syrup as a substitute of cubes (“It’s just a little richer and holds onto the espresso taste higher,” says Castagnetti), and shaking contemporary heavy cream in condiment squeeze bottles for ease of use. The espresso is taken into account as effectively, sourced from Pasadena’s Zona Rosa and introduced in a medium roast, permitting the distinctness of the espresso to shine by. These little touches add as much as one thing ambrosial: The high-quality espresso sings, the darkish, candy syrup melds with the brogue of the whiskey, and the cream seals all of it collectively in a form of dualistic jig, concurrently mild and darkish, hot and cold, candy and dry, and gone in a gulp.

“We’re stewards of one thing that can be right here lengthy after us,” says Francis Castagnetti of his octogenarian bar. “If my brother and I’ve this place for even simply 10 years, that’s a flash within the pan for what this place means to town.” The bar almost closed earlier than the pandemic, and sat vacant for 2 years earlier than the brothers took it on. Most weeks it’s a completely happy hub of regulars and curious guests, however on St. Patrick’s Day it blooms into one thing extra like a municipal vacation spot.

There are not any advance tickets to e book or reservations to make for St. Patrick’s Day at Tom Bergin’s, however there would possibly effectively be a line in case you arrive after 3 p.m. or so. Any wait is price it for an Irish espresso this good, so achingly easy and pure, but subtly up to date and up to date too, befitting the residing historical past of this exceptional bar.

“The Irish espresso is already excellent,” says Francis Castagnetti. “We simply let or not it’s what it’s.”