One of our friends has been hounding Chris and me for a double date night. He and his wife have his wife’s parents caring for the kids after they finish school, and the grandparents even take them two nights a week to stay at their home just blocks away. So Sunday and Monday are their nights to themselves, when date night out for them is on Monday. Monday is when they splurge and try something fun and pricey. They will make the reservations for dinner up to a month in advance. So while they have free babysitting very, very regularly, Chris and I don’t have that luxury. When I told Chris that I scheduled this meal out, he got a little sour with me and asked why we were accommodating their free babysitting schedule when we don’t get free babysitting. He also said that (even though he doesn’t work) he doesn’t typically want to go out on a Monday night and would prefer a night later in the week. Either way, it’s our first time doing “date night” with these friends after having a kid of our own, so I thought once wouldn’t be any harm.

My friend suggested this new “2D” Japanese omakase restaurant in the East Village, which I will admit did look gimmicky; it’s the kind of place that I probably would have been really excited to try in my 20s, but now that I’m in my late 30s, I just think it’s another restaurant. But the idea of “omakase” did excite me, as I do love sushi and raw fish, but we don’t really eat much of it when Kaia is around. And $90 for 15 courses did sound like a good deal…

…Until the “courses” came to our table. The first three “courses” came to our table on a single tray for each of us, and two out of three of them were borderline terrible. The first “ball” of raw fish looked and tasted like an after-thought, like leftover fish that they didn’t know what to do with, so they rolled it into a ball. The second in a little bowl was trying to be fancy, but it didn’t taste like anything. The third piece was just fine. It was the start to a miserable dining experience.

The rest of the 11 “courses” came on a single plate, all lined up, little nigiri along with one hand roll, which though they said they recommended we eat right away to prevent the seaweed from getting soggy, was already soggy and had zero crisp at all. The fifteenth and final course was a miso soup, which just felt like an after thought.

Our server was also pretty terrible. I couldn’t tell if he was either sleepy, high, or both. Multiple times, he forgot to bring Chris’s drink, give us more napkins, or more ginger as we requested. He also had to be nudged a few times to simply refill our water. Although I tipped 20 percent, in retrospect, I am not totally sure he deserved that.

We spent over $100 per person for what is likely the most subpar omakase experience we’ve ever had. Plus, once you tack on the inevitable babysitting bill of about $80-100, that is a really, really expensive night out. Granted, omakase dining experiences in New York have only gotten more and more expensive. Many of them are over $300+ per person now. While the company was good tonight, and we had a reasonably fun time out with our friends, I promised Chris that if we go out with them again that I’d do a more careful vetting of the chosen restaurant to ensure that it’s something that’s really worth paying for, as well as paying for babysitting on top of that. He was venting about how “not worth it” this meal was. I agreed with him. But alas, we can’t dwell on the past anymore. It’s literally a sunk cost now!