David Wonderich's Hennessy punch is historically delicious.Photo: Jennifer Lynn Pelka

The big discussion at last night’s “Brooklyn Eats” talk in Dumbo was the semantic difference between “foodie” and “foodist.” Phoebe Damrosch, author of Service Included pointed out that, in New York, “foodie” has become a derogatory term used to describe those who sit at home watching Semi-Homemade on the Food Network. Another type of foodie, an audience member added, is one who seeks out new restaurants, wines, and foods only to check them off a laundry list of places to see and be seen. Edible Brooklyn editor Gabrielle Langholtz suggested that bona fide food fans — those who read food books, travel to food destinations, and taste obsessively — could refer to themselves as “foodists,” as intense Star Trek fans go not by “trekkies” but “trekkers”. (Anne Saxelby, heirloom-tomato farmer Tim Stark, and beverage historian and panelist David Wondrich could all be identified as foodists.) To add to his cred, Wondrich served Hennessy punch (historically accurate, according to Bombay’s seventeenth-century regulations) out of a paint bucket. —Jennifer Lynn Pelka