re: House party for 80 -- I'm cooking

Good on ya for self-catering. It can be fun to tackle that sort of thing every once in a while. I’d be a tiny bit concerned about a traffic jam in your kitchen. If you’ve got appetizer type things on the kitchen island, people will cluster there...and others will be trying to get to the gumbo on the stove.

Why not set up your appetizer station away from the kitchen, closer to the bar? Or break up the apps into 2 clusters, one inside near the seafood and another inside near the bar? Traffic flow is as important as menu, to me. 80 ppl is quite a crowd in all but the largest houses.