This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Waiky Wang read her story, Omakase,

from the June 18th, 2018 issue of the magazine. Wang's first novel, Chemistry, which won the

Penn Hemingway Award, was published last year. Now here's Waikie Wang. Omakase. The couple

decided that tonight they would go out for sushi. Two years ago, they had met online.

Three months ago, they had moved in together. Previously, she had lived in Boston, but now she lived

in New York with him. The woman was a research analyst at a bank downtown. The man was a ceramic

pottery instructor at a studio uptown. Both were in their late 30s, and neither of them wanted kids.

Both enjoyed Asian cuisine, specifically sushi, specifically omakase.

It was the element of surprise that they liked, and it suited them in different ways.

She got nervous looking at a list of options and would second-guess herself.

He enjoyed going with the flow. What is the best choice? She'd ask him when flipping through

menus with many pages and many words. And he'd reply, the best choice was whatever you feel

like eating at the moment. Before they got there, the man had described the restaurant as a hole in the

wall. He had found it on a list of top sushi places in central Harlem. Not that there were many,

so instead of top sushi places, it may just have been a list of all sushi places. Be prepared,

he said. Nothing is actually a hole in the wall, she replied. Yet the restaurant was, as

the man had described, a tiny room with a sushi bar and a cash register. Behind the bar stood an

old sushi chef. Behind the cash register sat a young waitress. The woman estimated that the hole could

seat no more than six adults

and a child. Good thing sushi pieces were small. Upon entering, she gave the man a look. The look

...