During the second week of this month the Café at 407 at Ophelia’s Place was closed in order to install new state-of-the-art stoves and ovens. The popular coffee shop re-opened Aug. 11. The café is located at 407 Tulip St., in the village of Liverpool.
Café manager Tony Burrows pointed out that the kitchen needed to be upgraded and expanded.
“We want to be able to better serve not only our café customers and Ophelia’s Place clients, but our greater community as well,” Burrows said.
The Café at 407 first opened in 2009.
Kitchen manager Laura Hahn looks forward to further localizing the café’s menu.
“We’ll be making a shift towards more local and seasonal offerings, from the apples and beets in our apple walnut salad to the Ascioti’s sausages on our breakfast sandwiches,” Hahn said. “We’re going to bring you the freshest, most local ingredients possible. In turn, this supports the growth and healing of our local economy.”
While the kitchen improvements inspire creative cuisines, out front the café replaced its old, mismatched tables and chairs with snazzy new wooden ones, and a counter with stools now graces the window nearest Oswego Street. Thankfully, the comfy couch and easy chairs remain under the opposite window.
Alibi provided Thursday
The Café at 407 continues to host live music on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
At 7 p.m. this Thursday, Aug. 21, the quartet called Alibi will cover tunes by the Beatles, the Doors, Santana, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Dire Straits and many more. “We play songs that make you want to dance and sing along,” said guitarist Sam Vulcano.
Besides Vulcano, the quartet features Tony Micaroni on guitar, harmonica and keyboards, Rich Depoe on and bass and Dan Clausen on vocals and drums.
Next Thursday, Aug. 28, Sammy-winning soul singer Isreal Hagan returns to the café stage with his acoustic guitar. Admission is free, but the musicians appreciate receiving tips from the audience.
For information, visit cafeat407.org, or call 451-5855.
Famous corner
The Hall of Fame Barbershop, 612 Oswego St., is moving a couple doors west to take over the spot at the corner of Tulip and Oswego formerly occupied by Lucky’s Gold pawn shop.
The shop’s friendly barbers, Matt, Paul, Jeff, Joe and Chris, offer special wedding packages for haircuts and/or face-shaves for the big day for all the guys in the wedding party. Otherwise, a regular haircut costs $13. For Hall of Fame info, call 399-5995, or visit igotfaded.com.
Inflation
Fish sandwiches now cost $3.29 at the Fish Company, 209 Oswego St., in Ponderosa Plaza. That’s 30 cents more than last month’s price, $2.99, with or without tartar sauce.
Onward and upward
Heather Bianchi of Liverpool is the St. Joseph the Worker Roman Catholic Church 2014 scholarship winner. This fall, she’ll be studying at Cornell University, where she plans to major in communications. Bianchi excels as a student, but she also pursues extracurricular activities such as ice-skating and long-distance running.
Liverpool resident Steve Pierce is now shooting the fireworks at NBT Bank Stadium for the Syracuse Chiefs. Pierce’s firm, Pyrotechnico, lights up the North Side sky about 16 times this season. Three more fireworks shows remain on the regular-season schedule, including this Friday, Aug. 22, after an important 7 p.m. game against the Rochester Red Wings.
Librarian Anne Royer now runs the Book Klatch club at Liverpool Public Library. Last month the group discussed author Bill Bryson’s eye-opening non-fiction opus, “One Summer: America 1927.” Now they’re reading a novel, “Andrew’s Brain” by E. L. Doctorow, and will meet with Royer to talk about it at 11 a.m. Aug. 28, in the library’s Sargent Room.
Retired music teacher Jim Spadafore, who lives in Liverpool, played several gigs this summer backing up teenage singing phenom Nick Ziobro.
