Warren Buffett (95) Has Never Eaten Sushi, and It Makes Total Sense When You Know Him

He is one of the richest people on the planet, worth over $148 billion, and capable of dining anywhere in the world on any given evening. And yet, for most of his life, dinner has meant a burger, a Cherry Coke, and possibly a Dairy Queen Blizzard on the way home. The story of why Warren Buffett has never touched sushi is not really about food at all. It is about a man who has spent his entire life betting on what he already knows.

The Dinner That Started It All

The origin story of Buffett’s sushi aversion has an almost cinematic quality to it. In 1989, he was invited to an intimate dinner hosted by Akio Morita, the billionaire chairman of Sony, at his Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park, with four chefs preparing a 15-course sushi meal.

Buffett spent the entire evening sweating in silence. Plate after plate of raw specialties arrived, and plate after plate went back untouched. By the end of the night, he had not eaten a single bite, later calling it the worst meal of his life. He swore off Japanese food forever.

Sushi Was Just the Beginning

The sushi dinner was not an isolated incident. It was just the most famous episode in a lifetime of cheerful, unapologetic food refusal. When Buffett traveled to China with Bill Gates in 1995, he filled out a questionnaire about his food preferences before the trip and wrote that he did not eat Chinese food, and that if necessary they could serve him rice and he would just move it around on his plate before going back to his room to eat peanuts.

Bill Gates later recalled that during a stay at his home, Buffett opened a package of Oreos for breakfast. Hamburgers, ice cream, and Coke were the full extent of the man’s culinary range.

Why His Eating Habits Actually Make Perfect Sense

Here is the part that makes it all click. Buffett has built the most successful investing career in history by doing one thing relentlessly, which is sticking to what he understands and refusing to venture outside it. He calls it his circle of competence, and it turns out he applies exactly the same logic to lunch.

He told Fortune in 2015 that he eats like a six-year-old, consuming five 12-ounce Cokes a day and explaining that a quarter of his daily 2,700 calories come from Coca-Cola alone. The reasoning is perfectly Buffett, noting that the lowest death rate is among six-year-olds, so he decided to eat accordingly.

The Most Predictable Breakfast on Earth

Every morning he stops at McDonald’s for breakfast, choosing between a two-sausage patty on tighter market days or a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit when things feel more flush. Always exact change. His daughter Susie confirmed in 2024 that he still does this from the same Omaha home he bought in 1958 for $31,500.

The rest of the day involves See’s Candies, Utz potato sticks, Dairy Queen ice cream, and more Coke. His company Berkshire Hathaway is Coca-Cola’s largest shareholder, which means he has also made billions from the very addiction he refuses to give up.

What He Ordered in Tokyo Instead

When he visited Tokyo in 2023 to meet the heads of Japan’s five largest trading companies, a reporter asked what he had been eating during the trip. He answered simply: Hershey’s Kisses and Coke.

The man had just flown to Japan on a business trip that would generate enormous returns for his investors. He would not be trying the sushi. There are bolder investors than Warren Buffett, no doubt, but there has never been a more consistent one. And apparently that consistency extends all the way to the dinner table.