Happy Stan is, hand to heart, the most original bar-café concept we've run across in these trend-obsessed times. Drop by The Republik in Damansara Heights to experience a coffee and/or cocktail experience by VCR and Karl Too
Like day and night, the times of day that coffee and cocktails are habitually drunk, both beverages are poles apart. Very occasionally the Venn diagram overlaps.
Sure a slew of cafés attempt to serve cocktails (emphasis on the verb 'attempt') and vice versa, but ABV (Alcohol By Volume measures the amount of ethanol in a given amount of solution) and TDS (Total Dissolved Solids determines the viscosity and strength of coffee) rarely receive their fair share of attention at any one venue.
A passion project by Karl Too of Omakase + Appreciate in collaboration with VCR, Happy Stan is a refreshing way of thinking of and thanking our forebears for having the guts to marry depressants with stimulants.
The bar-café pays homage to one predecessor in particular: Stanton Delaplane won a Pulitzer Prize for reportage in 1942, but is better known for popularising Irish Coffee in the United States a decade later.
Stan and the owner of the Buena Vista café spent hours perfecting the Irish Coffee method, floating the cream on top of the coffee to a point where he almost passed out...
"I wonder how much of this is true!" chortles my confrère after reading the menu aloud. Seeing as what happened with Saint Patrick and Saint Valentine, it's completely feasible that the myth may have outgrown the man.