Los Dados opens in the Meatpacking District

I'm going to get right to the point: $15 tacos. $5 chips and salsa. "Mexican Home Cooking". Isn't cheap the definition of Mexican home cooking? Perhaps this is different? Perhaps it is expensive for a reason and it's going to blow our minds.

The first few cocktails weren't bad at all – cucumber margheritas, strawberry basil julep (we substituted Jack for Maker's) and a concoction spiked with jalpeño. A decent start. We were seated in a booth obviously upholstered by a waiter with a staple gun and attempted to read the menu under a light fitting made from leftover Jenga pieces. I seemed to be the only one to balk at the $12 guacamole that I assumed would be suitably massive. When a 2-inch ramekin arrived, I balked further, taking solace in the fact that the chips were actually rather good. Salmon carpaccio was really lovely, tuna tartare on crackers yummy, but spare.

We glanced around the room and realized, considering it was a preview night for a new restaurant and a Friday at that, it was sort of weird that half the tables were empty. I was excited to go because Los Dados has been lauded by everyone out there as the new 'design' restaurant. We even ventured into the torture that is the Meatpacking district at the weekend. It's like being in Ibiza during Ibiza bachelorette week. But we thought that Los Dados would be different. It wouldn't cater to people with too much money and no idea what they're eating. It wouldn't try and pull the wool over our eyes with bad upholstery, slapdash paint jobs and suburban lightfittings. It would be different.

Entrées were bland and certainly not worth their exorbitant prices (yes, I know that $15 an entrée is standard fare, but not for food like this) the sides appalling. An espresso saucer of sodden spinach vaguely upstaged the disgusting pickled vegetables that must have been giardiniera from a jar. My skirt steak was actually disgusting, but although prompted to send it back, I didn't. What's the point? It was disgusting in their intention. They hadn't made a mistake in their preparation of it. Bad cuts of meat plus a plentiful but tasteless, muddy sauce with yet more giardiniera is just gross food.

Los Dados was so bad that we barely glanced over the unexciting desserts, and got the hell out of there, drowning our sorrows in a few cognacs at APT around the corner. That's the thing about restaurants, don't you have to do something to make people want to come back?