Company 10 Year Anniversary Dinner

A couple weeks ago our Milan office reached its 10 year anniversary.  To celebrate, our CEO visited and hosted an employee dinner at Bar Peck, a restaurant in downtown Milan.  I must admit, there was some grumbling because of the inconvenient location (far from the office, no parking) and it being a week night.  But despite that, most everyone made it to the restaurant at the appointed hour and in true Italian fashion, we were all smartly dressed.  Suits and ties are definitely not the normal office attire for us engineers.

Unfortunately, our CEO's flight was delayed an hour so we passed the time mingling and eating way too many appetizers.  There were all kinds of delicious finger food, cheese, breadsticks, meat balls... and the waiters were way too generous with the flow of prosecco sparkling wine.  It was hard to resist the appetizers, as much as I wanted to save room for dinner.  And my friend T ended up having 6-7 glasses of wine before dinner even started.

Finally our guest of honor arrived and we all proceeded to sit down for dinner.  We had special menus for the event and the dishes were translated in English.  Notice the wines served on the left. 

For the sit-down appetizer, a primosale fresh cheese wrapped with grilled zucchini and bell peppers, with artichoke chips on the side.  I liked the vegetables and the chips.  The cheese was to me rather bland tasting.

The first dish was a risotto with zuchinni flowers and parmesan cheese crisp.  It was good, and this is coming from someone who doesn't love eating rice in general.

For the second dish, we were served veal wrapped with speck, a ham from the Tyrol region of Italy near Austria.  It looked fancy, but I found the meat a tad salty.  This was served with a really good red wine - a Morellino di Scansano.  It was the first time I had it and although I'm no wine expert, I can definitely recognize a good wine.  It's too bad I'm such a light drinker!

The dessert creation was delicious.  The presentation was lovely and I really enjoyed it, even though I was bursting at the seams at that moment.  This was served with a dessert wine and followed with a selection of digestive liquors.

It turned out to be a very fun night out with our colleagues.  This was a rare social event where none of the other halves were present.  I think that along with the free-flowing alcohol all night helped everyone let loose a little.  Can you tell which pictures were from the end of the night?