There was no real doubt what the first question to Senator Amy Klobuchar would be.

Backstage at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tex., where Ms. Klobuchar was the first in a series of presidential candidates to be interviewed on Saturday, the interviewer, Kara Swisher, asked: “Do you want to start with the comb or end with the comb?”

“We’re going to start with the comb,” Ms. Swisher, the co-founder of the technology news website Recode and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, concluded.

“The comb” was a reference to a February New York Times article about how Ms. Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, treats her staff in the Senate. In 2008, The Times reported, an aide bought her a salad in an airport but fumbled the plastic utensils. On the plane, Ms. Klobuchar berated the aide, pulled a comb out of her purse and ate the salad with it.

“It was me sort of doing a mom thing,” Ms. Klobuchar responded at Saturday’s event, co-sponsored by The Texas Tribune. “I didn’t have a fork. I used a comb to eat a salad very briefly on a plane in a MacGyver move.”