pasta paparazzi plagiarism & (former) primes

"What happened to eating your food and having conversation?" - David Chang. an interesting concept, what?
http://bit.ly/cfLtfA

Never quite been tempted to take pictures of dinners, but the one time I was glad someone did was the fabulous 6 seat Minibar ! food as art indeed and I can see the fascination !!

The fun with numbers lunch -
lunching with la niña y el niño to celebrate the end of the semester and the acceptance of a paper, we decided to try the "new look" 821 cafe, now housed 2 doors down (or is it up ?) at 825 Cary St. Never got the fascination with mojos and another unfortunate lunch last week just reinforced my opinion of the same.

I must confess, I'd only eaten a couple of times before at 821 (not counting the few times the wait was impossible); always felt I lacked the requisite HQ (hipster quotient), so it was with some trepidation that we ventured over. The place does seem to have undergone quite a transformation - you're greeted (oddly enough) by a magazine rack, but theres the mismatched chairs and tables and the crazy art but the light....lots of it ! and its decidedly cheery !!

Speaking of quotients, now 821 is a prime (of course :)) and so is 823...but I found out that 825 is a Smith number - one where the the sum of its digits is equal to the sum of the digits of its prime factors (8+2+5 = 3+5+5+1+1 from 3x5x5x11). Ah numbers....and since I like things like this, I ended up counting a whopping 56 different items on one side of their menu !! (not including variations/substitutions)... The other side had an equally long list of items, implying at the very least, a crazy list of 100 different options for lunch !! For another day - pruning lists....

Well bottomline - a fairly decent enough and tasty lunch, albeit a long drawn out one and not just from taking time to decide ! (the bad news) there was the lone efficient waitress serving a packed, rather diverse dining room ! given the waits, a small number of people apparently decided to try their luck some other time, a problem that might intensify when all the students return. lunch ~ $10.
given the generally subterranean feel of the previous location, the airy and bright look of 825 was nice. i wonder how long it will take for the light levels to attenuate (from assorted flyers?) I hope they dont. In the meantime, my HQ remains pitifully low....