I attended my first off-site Managers Meeting tonight, meeting up with Brian, Chris C, Mike, Rey and Deb over at Smith and Wollensky. On walking in, we got taken to a private room, which I expected to be some kind of conference room.

The guy walked us downstairs, past the dining areas, and into the kitchen. There, about 30 feet actually inside the kitchen, was a door and a small-ish room.

Sidenote: when we first walked in and started going in to the kitchen, my first thought was "Wow. This feels like it could turn in to a mob hit." It wasn't until I actually saw the room that I realized why I was being led into the kitchen area.

Basically, we were smack dab right in the middle of the kitchen. Which was pretty cool. There was often a lot of clanking and noise, but for the most part it was pretty muffled. At the onset though, shortly after everyone arrived, I heard one of the chefs yell out "FUUUUCK!" really, really loudly. Pretty funny.

Another view, from the other side of the table.

On the down side, this was a meeting that started at about 6PM and went until 10PM. But on the plus side, I got a pretty great steak dinner out of it. I'm not going into details here, but as always... lots of good info and good conversations/discussions between everyone.