Cranberry scone from Balthazar. The cappuccino took a while, but it was excellent. Paul Goldfinger photo © Oct. 15, 2016.
At Café Volan on Bangs Avenue in A. Park they serve their cappuccino’s lukewarm. I expected hot, but it seemed right. As it turns out, coffee professionals are mostly interested in taste, and cappuccino’s need to be between 60 and 70 degrees centigrade (about 150 degrees F.). I didn’t take the temperature of mine, but I would have preferred it to be a bit warmer. My mother always complained to waiters that her coffee (or soup) was not hot enough.
Balthazar’s is a wonderful restaurant on Spring Street in lower Manhattan. It is French, and everything there is great. I’m usually not a fan of scones because they tend to taste bland and too dry. The English like scones—it fits their national personality. But this scone was special! Maybe it was the French baker together with a generous dose of butter.
Here’s a link to our 2013 photo post of Balthazar:
https://blogfinger.net/2013/09/27/balthazar-restaurant-a-french-bistro-in-soho/
As for “the magic,” I once heard a lecture at the NY Photo Expo by a famous National Geo. photographer who said that he would search for wonderful settings and then he would set everything up and wait as long as is necessary until a person or persons with special qualities would enter the scene, and that is the moment when the “magic” can be found.
Eileen resisted getting a smart phone, but now she is a Googlemaster, and just about every photo she takes is with her iPhone. I’m still waiting for a really terrific iPhone camera. The new 7 was supposed to be that, but the reviews on the camera have been tepid. You can get attachments for the iPhone 6 which supposedly vastly improve the quality of the images. I think they cost about $100, but I haven’t gotten around to check it out. If you pay attention to the manual controls of your iPhone 6, you can get pretty good results, but not in challenging light conditions. —–Paul Goldfinger, Editor@Blogfinger
JOJO: From her new album Mad Love. This song is “Rise Up.”
JoJo from Vt. Age 25.
Only the Brits know how to serve a scone. With lots of butter, strawberry jam and Clotted Cream. If you havent been to England and had a Devon Cream Tea, you haven’t experienced scones at their best.