Ordering Sushi for a Crowd

I love Sushi. You may recall a rather spectacular Sushi lunch that I had in New York, with two of my colleagues, a year or so ago. I think $200 plus was the damage. That comes close to another lunch with a co-worker that came to $140. Despite the number of times I've eaten sushi I can proudly claim that I have never actually had to order for myself. In fact, if faced with it I’m not sure I could. In addition to the intimidating thought of selecting from 200-some-odd items on the menu there is the prospect of having to perform math without the aid of a calculator or spreadsheet. This is further complicated when you’re out with a crowd and are faced with having to estimate the number of pieces needed. Well, one of my colleagues (a co-conspirator in Sushi-gate) has actually come up with a rather fool-proof system for solving this problem.

The other evening we were out for dinner with 13 people and, as usual when it was somebody else’s money, we settled on Sushi. My friend's system starts with three simple questions:

• “Do you have any allergies?”;
• "Is there any thing you particularly want?"; and,
• “On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very hungry, how hungry are you?” .

He then assigns a factor to the number of pieces of sushi that should be ordered based on how hungry they are: 15 pieces for someone who answers 5; twelve pieces for someone who answers 4; and ten pieces for someone who answers 3.

There are subtlties, of course: it assumes a gender-mixed crowd with appetizers (1 edamame for every 4 people).

Last night, we ended up ordering 150 pieces of sushi – a mix of sashimi, nigiri and some rolls. Every piece was eaten and no one walked away hungry. It is a tried-and-true system that I've seen many many times.