The dinner wasn't a particularly long one, only a courtesy to the visitors and a way to socialize the Admiral with the two Reavers so that he had an excuse to come check in on them every day so he could see how Nico was doing with the Mecha development.
He didn't have any skills in the area, but he was a huge fan of new technology development videos, including the live streams that the Terminus Trading Company broadcast for the Alliance Data Network.
He never thought that he might get a front-row seat to actually watch them make a brand-new Mecha variant right on his own ship, where he wouldn't have to guess what was being created through the careful camera positioning and the censors which hid military secrets.