The month of December is always filled with business, corporate and association dinners.  I was recently invited to a dinner, which was affiliated with a board meeting.  This meeting was more of a fun setting and I got to tag along with my Bride.  Her industry and clients make a job seem more enjoyable when there are sessions like this to break up the usual business routine.

There was a large group that met one evening at Genitti’s Hole-In-The-Wall in Northville, Michigan.  This is catering/restaurant/dinner theater site that started off as a small specialized food market and slowly morphed and grew into the present complex that it is.  There are several rooms of different sizes for groups to meet in.  They can do weddings, showers, service organizations and business meetings.  Genitti’s also makes it fun and casual, with the exposed brickwork walls that have graffiti written on the walls, a mélange of pictures, posters and you name it.  They specialize in a seven course family style dinner of smaller table settings, where nothing matches, just think of a big get-together in someone’s basement, and you have the setting, and they have been doing this for decades.  The waitresses bring bowls and platters of food to the tables, and then it is served family style by the diners.  The food while not gourmet is excellent comfort food and the casual setting always seems to be conducive for conversations, and a good time.  Afterwards there is a stage and theater area that can handle the diners from several of the dining rooms all at one time.  The shows have an Andy Hardy “let’s put on a play” feel to them filled with jokes, songs, puns and groans, as well as audience participation.  When the guests leave Genitti’s they are sated and happy from an evening that is not the usual night out.

Genitti’s may not be a gourmet house, but fear not, as they use the same concept for the bar and wine service as well.  They have an antique bar that can be “bellied up to” as soon as you enter the facility.  They can make mixed drinks, draught beers and wine.  When I walked in that evening Laura Genitti was surprised to see me, and I told her that I was actually with one of the parties that evening and she went back to the bar and poured me a glass of wine, and said “here, this is good” as she smiled and handed me a juice jar glass of wine poured almost to the brim.  There are no fancy glasses or stemware.  All drinks are served in an assortment of glasses that one could find in the back cabinets at most houses.  With the calculated casualness to the setting, the wines served are equally casual.  The wine drinkers were served glasses of wine from Liberty Creek of California and there was a choice of Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.  All of the Liberty Creek wines were non-vintage and I am sure that the blending of the wines from year to year offers a chance to continue a simple consistency of taste.  This was just a fun evening, and there are times and dates when one can go and experience this evening, when they have public attendance, as not all evenings are solid business bookings.