This dissertation examines interactions between sushi chefs and customers at sushi bar counters, using both ethnography and conversation analysis methods, with a particular focus on the communicative practices and embodied actions participants deploy both to make requests for food, and to receive and register these requests. It is argued that these transactions involve a tension between an orientation to achieving to secure shared understandings (achieved through temporally expensive expansions of ordering sequences), and an orientation to socially affiliative relationships of trust between the participants (achieved through sequence minimization). This tension is an arena through which cultural familiarity and distance are played out in these interactions. Next, I consider the relationship between the chef's gaze and body position as resources through which customers' orders are registered. It is argued that verbal recipiency is a frequent feature of sequence expansion in orders where the chef is initially not gazing at an ordering customer. Finally, this dissertation also examines the formulation of requests for sushi in terms of: (a) the institutional identities of the participants, i.e. beneficiary and benefactor, (b) the sequential positioning of the request, (c) participants' orientation to their entitlement to make a request, and (d) mobilization of recipient's response. In examining this particular context of food service, I aim to demonstrate how chefs and customers work to achieve the mutual understanding necessary to achieve successful requests in cross-cultural service encounters. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]