Regarding talking about the food:
The specific instance I was thinking of regarding food was a conference I was at recently. It was actually two conferences held back-to-back, and I was attending both. At the first one the snacks were fruit smoothies, fruit skewers and the like. At the second it was chocolate bars. So during the second conference I grabbed something, then made a comment about the different food and what that implied about the different audiences, and that led into a conversation with a group of three people, exchange of cards, and some follow-up emails since. So yeah, it helps to have something interesting to say about the food, but it's still a convenient way to get talking. And people are at these events to talk to other people, so it doesn't take much to get started. Similarly, if someone says "nice crab dip" to you, rather than shutting down the conversation with a "yeah", it behooves you to open it up some random personal detail ("yeah, I don't normally eat crab back in <home town>", "it reminds of the time I visited <random seaside place>", etc.)
As for "seeming creepy":
Whatever, man. One goes to networking events to talk to people. If you have a problem with people talking to you at a point in time and your social skills are so low you can't you make that obvious, don't go to these events. The other side of the coin is you don't glom onto people when they obviously don't want to talk to you. That's why chatting in a line is good -- you have a maximum of 5 mins if the conversation goes nowhere.