This Is the Best Irish Coffee You’ll Drink Today

The Irish Coffee is a pretty straightforward recipe: cream, coffee, sugar, whiskey. There’s even a rhyme to its simplicity. 

But its simplicity also makes it a wonderful cocktail to hack, as we’ve done many times over the years. Recently, we tried a variation that was both unexpected and oddly perfect, a new combination of ingredients and flavors that ended up elevating the drink from a comfortable favorite to something complex and brash (and delicious).  

We found this twist on an Irish Coffee at NYC’s Monkey Thief, a Hell’s Kitchen cocktail bar influenced by various Asian cultures and flavors. Here, the classic recipe is spiced up with Vietnamese coffee, pandan (in liqueur form, from a new brand called Kota) and an egg yolk foam.

“My two partners in the bar grew up in Delhi and traveled through Asia extensively, and I have as well,” says David Muhs, Monkey Thief’s co-founder and head bartender. “I wanted to create a concept bar that put those amazing ingredients and flavor profiles at the forefront.”

A Beginner’s Guide to Hacking Your Irish Coffee

It’s a simple four-ingredient cocktail. But you can and should go wild with those ingredients.

“I discovered pandan through my trips to Asia, I think it was a cooking class in Chiang Mai where I first used it,” he adds. “It’s a fun ingredient to play with — it’s approachable but exciting. The flavor isn’t outlandish, but it offers amazing cocktail applications.” 

While pandan adds new flavors, Vietnamese coffee is like adding rocket fuel to your drink. “I always loved Vietnamese coffee, especially the egg coffee in Vietnam,” says Muhs. “It’s not really on-brand for us to make an Irish Coffee, so how can we spin it to make it fit within our world? Vietnamese coffee is an easy solution. And then instead of just putting the typical cream on top, we wanted to mimic that egg coffee, so there’s egg yolk.”

That said, Irish whiskey obviously plays a central role here. The bar utilizes Teeling Small Batch, an excellent whiskey finished in ex-rum casks. “The fact that the Monkey Thief team recognized the flavor profile of Small Batch and its ability to pair with classic Vietnamese staples like pandan really shows the profound range of use for Irish whiskey,” says Ciarraí Kelly, a whiskey brand ambassador for Bacardi. “You can tell the crossover between bar and kitchen was prominent in this drink. Having egg yolks used alongside pandan creates such an elevated serve, and it showcases the skill of the NYC bartender community.”

(Side note for another day: Kelly has several Irish Coffee variations that she loves, including the frozen variations you can find at Erin Rose in NOLA — I concur — and the Dead Rabbit in NYC.) 

So, the Monkey Thief version is delicious. But is it going to keep me up all night?

Muh laughs. “Yeah, sorry.”

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