Decision Making (or Why 12 People Don't Get Tapas)
Ryan, Lori's friend who is now working at Bridgewater Capital in Stamford, made a very interesting comment when we were sitting around ordering tapas. He said that when he went out with people from work, this process of collective ordering never happened. "Food just got ordered," he said. And it's funny, because it was what I was thinking but just
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But seriously, I think a significant contributor to this specific situation was that few of us (and none of our ordering group) had been to the restaurant before. Knowing what I know now, I would have gotten two of those duck dishes right off the bat, which would have probably taxed the limits of my clout and thus I would be done with the ordering.
However, I do think that the size of the dishes was unfortunate. One dish wasn't big enough to guarantee a taste for everyone, but two dishes wasn't reasonable unless someone actually liked it (which, again, goes back to the lack of a priori knowledge of the restaurant).
I know I was especially worried that a really tasty dish would be ordered, placed in front of a certain personage, who would wholly consume it before I ever got a chance to look at it, just less partake.
Despite my focus on the specific mechanics of this dinner, I am intrigued by the broader message of this post. The dynamics of communal ordering do seem to differ wildly from order to order and not necessarily along the axes you might expect. I'll have to keep an eye on such things next time I am insisting on even more chicken tikka masala.
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