A 67-top

Steak Diane for a main at a seven-top in the basement of an old stable in Montreal, near the river, the room loud, the wine by the bottle, the escargot drowned in garlic butter, my baked potato untouched. A metal bowl of pickles, a loaf of bread (uncut), and optimally room-temped butter for the table.

My martini, dirty, contained three skewered olives. A typical number of olives, but uniquely staggered on the toothpick, almost like the natural fruit on the branch. It turns out they were askew only due to the pits, still ensconced. I’ve had woefully mushy olives in a martini before but never pits. But I’d bit gently. I was fine, and the olives were of good quality; neither love nor teeth were lost.

Lunch was Mexican; we were 67. A work offsite. Dinner the night before was Cambodian-Vietnamese; we were 55. Tomorrow, dinner will be Italian; we will be 67. I’ve never met any of these people before. Last time the company did this, a year ago, they were 16.

On Google Meet, everyone sees each other from the same angle, that of each person’s laptop camera. You sit in your apartment, your house, a coffee shop, starting at so many squares on a screen (73 now, in total; some people could not attend the offsite), and everyone sees everyone from that same angle. We sat at tables in the same light tonight, viewing each other from our own eyes, without camera-to-screen mediation. There are 67, and you see only those in front of you. Nobody is muted; nobody is speaking into a laptop mic. Everybody is talking at once and the ceiling is low. Sometimes, you must lean in to make out the words.

At dinner, there was a squadron of servers. At lunch, I saw only one. At dinner, as we streamed in, 67, I watched the hosts. At lunch, they served us family-style. At dinner, we each ordered our appetizer, our main, our salad, our main, and our dessert, from a menu limited but still sprawling, our company logo printed on the page.

How big was their kitchen? Their walk-in? I marveled at their ability to bring out each course essentially at once, 67 plates at a time. Our table of seven saw six escargots and one burrata at appetizer time. Nex: two house salads, five wedges. Three Steak Diane, one rib steak, one rib-eye, one filet mignon kebob, one lobster. Seven creme brûlée. Seven coffees. I can’t speak to the rest of the basement, only my table. Each course came out, more or less, at once. I ordered my steak medium rare, and it was good, but it was medium. It had been sitting for a moment; the kitchen’s ability to ship 67 dishes at once was only an illusion supported by the industrious squadron of servers. But I was happy.

The point of an offsite is not, ostensibly, to eat. But I spent one hour at breakfast, two at lunch, and four at dinner. We are 73 on the org chart and 67 in the restaurant tonight, and as I draft this newsletter, I am so full. The point of an offsite is to render more pleasant the work to come later, when we once again squares on a screen, viewing each other from the same angle, when everyone is muted, and we speak one at a time. To remember the sound of 67 people eating, drinking, and laughing in a stone-walled basement.