Raquel Livingston’s recent dinner at New York’s Koete Omakase wasn’t like most other nights out for Japanese food. For one thing, she says, it felt more like a “biology class with a tasty reward.”

The software engineer attended a $218 dinner built around a chef breaking down a whole tuna. She was surprised by how much she learned: The restaurant distributed a pamphlet with a diagram to highlight the rarest cuts. Livingston left with even more fresh tuna — enough for two subsequent nights.

By the third day, “it was a little overwhelming,” she says. She and her boyfriend still enjoyed the rolls they made that night.