Neta

Have you ever been to Masa? Neither have we. None of us here at The Infatuation are currently in a position to drop a minimum of $450 a head for dinner before booze, tax, and tip. And the CEO of Goldman Sachs won’t return our phone calls, so it looks like our plan to have him buy us dinner there and discuss "investing in the website" is on hold. I guess we read all those Jim Cramer books for nothing. Luckily, Neta is run by two chefs who learned their stuff from Masa himself, so now you can get a Masa-lite experience with a slightly more manageable check at the end. It will only cost you an arm instead of an arm and both legs. Sorry, I’ll stop making jokes that my Dad would like.

While Neta is certainly less expensive than Masa, it unfortunately isn’t your best option if you want to spend good money and get fantastic sushi. We've had much better meals at 15 East and Sushi of Gari, and were hoping this place was gonna bring it harder for the cash it cost us. For example, on my recent visit, my party sprang for the larger omakase – $135 per person, also known as “a sh*tload of money” – and we weren't exactly $135 worth of impressed. From what we could tell, it wasn't much different than the cheaper ($95) option. Our waitress told us that the more expensive omakase featured “three more savory courses and additional pieces of sushi.” We were expecting a larger variety of sushi. Instead, we got the same sushi they serve everyone, but got two pieces of each roll instead of one. Maybe we should have asked for clarification, but that wasn’t what we were hoping for when we handed over a suitcase full of bills. Ultimately, Neta would be a much better experience if you go and pick a few pieces of fish and the small plates that they do best. There are some incredible things to eat here, but there are also some duds on the menu. It's also probably a much better experience if you have endless money to spend. Then again, so is everything.