Behind...and in front of the scenes at LivingSocial's 918 F St. Inaugural Event

LivingSocial is getting...well, social.  The brick and mortar facility they've created is pretty cool.  A lot of good companies/people were involved with the project including Winmar Construction, VSAG Consulting, FDS Design, Streetsense, and yours truly.
Let's start by exploring the venue itself.

This is the demo/teaching kitchen.  It's beautiful if you get excited by shiny stainless and haute technology.  There are monitors all over that display the feed from the automated camera covering the action at the head cooking station.  Imagine you and 30 of your closest friends learning how to make signature dishes from the famous chefs who actually created them.  This is a stellar idea as these chefs would normally have to shut down their restaurants to do a teaching class like this, and the view wouldn't be nearly as good.

Acres of stainless....

A little artsy treatment from Snapseed and Hipstomatic.

All the tools you could need.  Top notch, shiny and new!

This is one of the mixed-use spaces that was set up as a dining room for the trial-run event I attended.

This shot was taken in the bar downstairs.  It has a cut-out in the ceiling that allows you to view the live music area from below.

Another mixed-use room.  This venue has many.  Too bad Bob Ross isn't still alive..it would have been fab to have him teach people how to make love to their trees here.

This is the restaurant kitchen where Mike Isabella was pulling it all together for our introduction to his new menu. This was the first night the Living Social facility on F St. was open, and Mike used the opportunity to showcase his menu for Bandolero, his new restaurant that will be opening in Georgetown in late spring.

Here are the items we got to try.  We had a table of four (and what a foursome it was) so we just asked them to bring us one of everything....

These glasses were being prepped for the appetizer cocktail which was a favorite of the table.

Various dips and guac.

Fresh tortilla chips and pork rinds for dipping.  Tasty.

Crispy fish....

Steak, crab...

The texture of this tamale was perfection.

More interesting beverages...they wanted to make sure we had a happy time!  My favorite was the City of Gold (in the champagne glass).

Short ribs braised to perfection.

Tasty veg soft tacos...

This is a shot I took just before Mike had all the servers gather round so he could explain the offerings to them.  He puts together some tasty food.  Graffiato is still one of my favorite places to go.

Here's a shot of Mike after the festivities, grabbing a much-deserved drink with John McCarthy of MICROS.