CloudNine Resorts’ Sky Lodge has been described as where Soho meets the mountains. And some are discovering it’s a good place to combine work and relaxation.

At the 33-unit luxury resort in the historic Old Town district of Park City, Utah, service and vistas are thoughtfully crafted. Opening just over a year ago, it has proven to be a facility well-suited for small corporate meetings, family reunions, and incentive groups.

Sky Lodge features four onsite dining venues, including the hip and contemporary Easy Street Brasserie; Easy Street Bakery, serving Peet’s coffee, pastries, and gelatos; Bar Boheme; and the Sky Club, which seats 45 and has outdoor space for 75, either seated or standing. Zoom, serving American continental cuisine, is on the property but is leased to a third-party operator.

The lodge’s executive chef, Scott Boberek, often makes dining a theatrical experience by presenting creative action stations. Depending on the event, action stations can be located nearly anywhere: in any or all of the dining venues, ballroom, lobby, veranda, poolside, at the bar, or at the end of a hallway. Boberek has run action stations at events with groups of up to 500, although 125 is the average number.

“If we have an event where someone buys out the entire property and wants a flow of traffic throughout the property, we put them both outside and inside,” says Boberek. “The Sky Club, for example, has a radiant-heated rooftop deck, so it’s easy to have action stations in both places. We also do action stations next door in the bakery. We put them anywhere.”

Why does Boberek do action stations? “Guests enjoy being part of everything and seeing it all made in front of them,” he says. The personal preparation and service also lets them “request whatever they like—‘no shrimp,’ ‘no chicken,’ ‘extra cheese.’ It’s all available at the station.” And they can soak in the sights, sounds, and smells coming from fresh food cooked right before their eyes.

Each station is manned by a single chef, usually one of the line cooks. Boberek’s job is to “bounce from station to station to make sure everything is going well.”

Buffet setups, of course, are replenished as needed and maintained at the proper temperature. Boberek prefers a chaferless buffet. “I’m not using the old-fashioned stainless-steel chafers. We use just the platform and elevate the water pans with bricks, either regular bricks like those used for building a house or glass blocks.”

Staying sufficiently but not overly stocked is important. “If we’re doing a party of 500, we usually have enough out there for 100 at a time,” says Boberek. “We don’t want to let food sit out unrefrigerated and become dangerous.”

Guests, he adds, “are pretty happy to see that because they know product is coming out of the back of the house fresh, to be cooked right in front of them. They can see that the ingredients haven’t been sitting out and aren’t wilted, drooping, or in the danger zone.”

Equipment on hand at each station can range, depending on what’s being made, from a turkey fryer to tabletop butane burners or induction cookers. Chefs tend to like induction cooking systems because, as Boberek points out, “they are very safe; there is no open flame.”

Obviously, an action station needs an electrical source. Less obviously, “we need to make sure our electrical source can handle the wattage without blowing fuses every two minutes,” Boberek says. “Sometimes a client asks if we can put the station in a particular corner. We can’t always accommodate those requests because plugging in burners can trip a lot of fuses.”

Boberek likes to place an action station deep within a room, far from the entrance. “People tend to hang out at or near the action station, just like at a party in a house, where everyone hangs out in the kitchen,” he says. “That’s the heart of the house, basically. If we put it as far back as possible, we can get more people into the room.”

Boberek’s most unusual action station story?

“We didn’t do it,” he begins, “but I had a client ask for this, and I thought it would be a great idea if it were possible.” The idea, from the movie The Right Stuff, involved hanging an entire cow in a rotisserie oven. “I’m talking the whole steer. Somebody actually wanted to do that, but we couldn’t find a rotisserie big enough to handle it.”

Boberek has, however, served an 85-pound suckling pig at an action station, which multiplied the theatrical aspect exponentially. “We started at 6 a.m., and the guests attending the functions could see it cooking. They knew it would not be ready until dinner, so they were thinking about it all day long.

“And when they went skiing, they knew the pig would be ready and waiting for them when they got back.”

Howard Riell is a veteran editor who has written for nearly 140 business and consumer magazines, e-zines, blogs, newspapers, and newsletters. He is based in Las Vegas.