As for my losing my food festival virginity, I wound up schlepping way the hell over to the Hudson after succumbing to curiosity about NoMad, a place I had avoided like $79 chicken but figured was worth a try if a car company was picking up the tab for a bunch o’ bloggers in a private room. My consort and I had to sit through a slideshow on the new models, none of which was honey-colored to fit this year’s food theme, but we were rewarded with tickets to the foodstraganza that weekend. Since he was traveling, I was going to toss them, but I went online and saw what they were worth and felt obligated to do my research. So I recruited a friend and we ate and drank our way through what I expected to be a gangbang but was actually rather civil compared with many “best new chef” awards parties. Regular peeps who paid were much more restrained than the professional locusts.

Julie, who has more of a track record with feeding frenzies, insisted we pick up the swag bags as we went in, and here’s what was jettisoned at the outset:

Here’s what I expected to see everywhere but what turned out to be, luckily, in the minority:

Here is the elixir someone actually thought people would want to drink in a cavern lined with wines good and bad (well, it was an event where people were lining up for “free” Chipotle just steps from Blue Smoke’s pulled pork):

And this is an image that only needed the Delta pedicabs outside to make more of a mockery of all the Tweets later on about what skinflints that airline’s operator are. Drinks up front, pretzels back by the toilet. . .

Finally, I didn’t snap no photo, but I did find it rather revealing to see the NYT booth flogging subscriptions with its fud issue of the magazine on that particular weekend. You’d almost think they planned it. . . .