Had a similar-ish experience once -- meeting the hiring manager for coffee, knowing this would be a prelude to a standard onsite interview (which I was fine with).
And it was a very productive discussion. We talked about a lot of some pretty high-level stuff, both technology-wise and business-wise -- possible failure modes in their fraud detection process; customer acquisition strategies moving forward, etc.. Not in a fuzzy, "whatever" way -- but in a serious, analytical way. You know, high-level, adult stuff.
The weird part? When I got the schedule for the interview (btw several more hours in length than the "couple of hours" we had initially talked about -- but we'll let that slide for now), the first thing they wanted be to do was come in at 9 AM for a session on "logic problems" -- you know: pirates, gold coins, poisoned wine bottles -- for a whole hour.
To which I wanted to say, "Wait -- didn't we just have a conversation in that cafe demonstrating exactly the level of critical thinking skills you're looking for (arguably at a much more nuanced level, in fact), and applied actual, real problems -- not silly, made-up puzzle problems?"
But of course I felt too shy to just come out and say that. So made up some excuse about "accepting another offer", instead.
