For the all-hands where you cannot ask two hundred people
At a certain size the polling stops working. You cannot survey two hundred people about dietary requirements and preferences and expect an answer you can act on, and the order still has to feed all of them.
The Carthage Feast is our widest board for exactly that problem: smoked beef brisket and charcoal beef next to mixed grill and chicken shawarma, tacos beside lasagna, mezze beside mac and cheese. Whatever somebody was hoping for, something on the table is close enough.
Everything is zabiha-sourced with no pork and no alcohol, so the largest single dietary question in a Los Angeles office is answered before it is asked.
- Smoked beef brisket, charcoal beef BBQ, lamb chops, mixed grill
- Chicken shawarma, birria and chicken tacos, mixed fusion taco
- Lasagna, penne alfredo, Mediterranean chicken pasta, mac and cheese
- Mezze, royal couscous, Greek and caprese salads, steamed vegetables
- Baklava, churros, brownies and fusion desserts
Breadth is the product, so do not narrow it
The common mistake with this board is trimming it toward the organiser's own taste, which turns the widest menu we do into an ordinary one and removes the reason to order it.
If the budget will not carry the full spread at the headcount, the right move is fewer proteins at a larger volume rather than the same number of dishes made smaller. A thin version of a wide board looks worse than a generous narrow one.
Label everything, because nobody will ask
A two-hundred-person lunch has nobody to ask. Every dish goes out with a card naming it and its allergens as standard, not on request, and the vegetarian dishes are positioned at the head of the line rather than the end of it.
That last detail is small and it is the one people mention afterwards. A vegetarian who reaches the end of a long table to find two sides left has been told something about how much thought went in.
