(Almost) Everything That Went Down at Hotel Thrillist New Orleans

For some, New Orleans is synonymous with the most fun you'll ever have in your life. For others, it's synonymous with the best food you'll ever have in your life. Oh, and some people find the music pretty decent.

To us, New Orleans is all that and more, which is why we held Hotel Thrillist 2016 there. To relive that glorious, 3-day event again and again in our minds, hearts, and mouths, we put together the best photos from the weekend, plus a few deep, moving words.

If you don't eat too much in New Orleans, you're either having a bad trip, or too good of a trip. To kick off the weekend, we threw a tasting festival featuring 16 restaurants serving an equal number of NOLA's most noshable dishes. Get gluttonous with these visuals:

Saturday morning saw a brunch of truly NOLA proportions. "NOLA limit," if you will (you don't have to). At chef John Folse's Restaurant R'evolution, that meant swamp fare -- you know, frogs, gators, the usual. Executive Chef Jaff Mattia and Chef de Cuisine Jana Billiot gave us tips on cooking those  exotic proteins, and game meat in general.

"The name of the game with gamier, swamp meat is marinades and brines," says Chef Billiot. "Braising the rabbit and brining the frog for a while is how you should approach it. It just takes time." Billiot is no stranger to these ingredients; she grew up in rural Louisiana (her high school class had 9 students) and has been hunting gator and fishing swamps since the rest of us have been watching cartoons about talking turtles.

Chef Mattia hails from New England and came up working with quail (which he served up with waffles at brunch) and other, less bayou-esque wildlife. "You shoot a duck in the wild, and the meat is like purple," he says. "[It's] gamier, firmer, and you need to marinate it. That complexity of flavor can handle more spices, but requires more fats and gravies (because it's so lean)."

The Royal Sonesta New Orleans is unique in the French Quarter, maintaining a grand hotel vibe as hordes of partiers roll by, night after night, year after year. GM Al Groos: "We do a Mardi Gras ceremony every year called 'the greasing of the poles'. We literally put grease on the poles so people can't climb up to the balcony."

The place manages to be a staging point for serious revelers (not Thrillist -- definitely not) while also serving as a discrete respite for celebs. "At R'evolution, we get some pretty big names coming into our private dining space," says Groos. "Robert DeNiro came in with his wife for his anniversary dinner, and Brad and Angelina came in with the kids." (The news on the latter couple broke two days after our weekend ended.)

TAKE5 is a clutch party snack: for one, it's candy. But it's also got the sustenance of five freakin' ingredients: peanut butter, pretzels, caramel, chocolate, and peanuts (great for keeping the energy up). And at our event, the team behind the treat brought that energy in a big way, enlisting a local dance crew to take over the last hour of our brunch for synched break moves. Why? It was all their way of introducing their ridiculous new wrapper that actually plays and sequences sick beats. And speaking of music…

New Orleans and music go together like... well, the connection's so strong, there's no analogy strong enough, but needless to say we felt compelled to bring our A-game in the talent department. Throughout the weekend, we had sets from living jazz legend Irvin Mayfield, Grammy-winning Rebirth Brass Band, and house-leveling DJ Samantha Ronson. Between mouthfuls of beignet and swigs of Jack Fire-spiked milk punch, we caught up with Mayfield and Ronson to see just what New Orleans means to them.

Between meals and parties, the Hotel Thrillist crew posted up on the hotel's unbelievable Bourbon St. balcony. But on Saturday night, to close things out in style, we teamed up with Jack Daniel's Tennessee Fire to put together a Second Line parade down Bourbon... which then boarded three two-story Mardi Gras floats, which carried us on to Republic night club. We threw beads at a lot of people, because everyone seemed to really want beads. At Republic we danced until waaay too late to Ronson and Rebirth. It all made this weekend one for the books, or at least for a long-form online article. Don't believe us? Well here's a nice numerical snapshot for ya:

And for good measure, here are a few more of our favorite pics: