Martha Stewart celebrates a demo well done at the Burger Bash. (Photo: Jeffrey Gurwin)

The Upper East Side—complete with its collagen-swollen lips and navy blazers—migrated to the New School yesterday to worship at the Viking Range altar of domestic goddess Martha Stewart. The uptown dowagers warbled, muttered and ultimately shouted down each late arrival that attempted to cut the line into the Tischman Auditorium. Later, once everyone had been comfortably seated and Stewart’s electric range failed to prove as effective as a gas burner, Martha would say of Viking, “Thank you for providing us with this lovely kitchen anyway.” Unlike her acolytes, Martha does not mutter; she speaks with a practiced, pronounced passive-aggressive tone that has become her signature.

Case in point, some choice Marthaisms: Disappointed that festival director Lee Schrager sent her flowers instead of giving their cost to charity, “He only sends what is given.” Complimenting a competing cookbook, Martha praised a recipe in Francis Mallmann’s Seven Fires, then qualified it, “But he cooks with butter.” Of her favorite potato pancakes—her mother’s—made with Idaho spuds and beer: “And we were not even Jewish.” As the scent of the completed meal wafted through the hall, Martha taunted the crowd and the crew: “I wish I could feed you all. I really do. But I gave up catering years ago.” To Martha Stewart Living food editor Sarah Carey, who spoke of her time spent on an Oregon hazelnut farm: “In our house we always called them filberts.” And as the savory demo—Muscovy duck breast with red cabbage and potato pancakes—transitioned to dessert—a sundae with store-bought ice cream and hazelnut praline—deputy editor Anna Kovel admitted she prefers her sundae with not one but two scoops of ice cream. Martha retorted, “You do? I don’t like the ice cream so much as I like the other things.”—Adam Robb