I've only been to two meetups. The meetup was a regular monthly meet held at a local bar/pub and they often go to a restaurant for a meal later. It's a fairly big/busy bar, so nobody in there cares why you're meeting up. You just look like a group of friends meeting up for a drink. Having spent many years organising shit for various things, hiring venues etc, I like this low key, low effort kind of organising!

There probably already are dozens of public meetups in your city. Check out which venues they go to and pick one of them?