Inamo – a bit touch and go

Like most people, I enjoy food. However, just like most people I'm also too lazy and too used to instant gratification to learn how to cook well enough to satisfy my own demanding taste buds. Thankfully, I'm spoilt for choice thanks to London's huge range of restaurants, ranging from inexpensive falafel canteens to high-end haute cuisine private dining rooms.

I don't often get to mix my embarrassingly intimate love of technology and restaurants unless I decide to ignore my dining companion by indulging in a game of Scrabble on my iPhone. Unless, that is, I go to Inamo, a Japanese restaurant in London's Soho area. Although don't go shopping beforehand, as they don't have a cloakroom which is annoyingly inconvenient.

Inamo's main gimmick is that you place your order using a computer instead of a waiter. The computer is built into the base of your table, but instead of a monitor, the screen image is projected onto the table surface from a larger overhead projector. A small circular touchpad built into the corner of the table allows you to move a cursor to navigate a rather cramped icon-based interface for viewing the menu. Read a brief description, look at a very large, but low resolution picture of each dish before clicking on the items you want, sending your order electronically to the kitchen.

If you need help, you can click a button to call a server which you'll need to do if you accidentally order a wrong item and need it removed from your bill which is far too easy to do inadvertently. Once you're done, you can play games such as tic-tac-toe or battleships, view a map of the local area, change the computer's desktop wallpaper which doubles as a virtual tablecloth and request your bill. It's all mildly distracting for a few minutes until I got bored and decided to gaze at the dimly lit and tastefully, if unimaginatively, decorated interior.

It's all very amusing, but the computerised ordering system is a bit of a missed opportunity. Although it lets you watch a webcam of the kitchen, the footage is too grainy, small and uninstructive if you're really interested in how your food is prepared. Since the servers who attended me on my visit were unable to answer some basic questions about my meal (Is the tuna line or net caught? Is the wagyu beef Japanese or American? Is the projector DLP or LCD?), then the computer should have this information on file. Except it doesn't.

Even more annoying is the rather hit and miss quality of the actual food. Although Inamo is nominally Japanese, its cuisine is really pan-Asian fusion which is a pretentious way of saying the chefs have nicked ingredients and dishes from all over and then mashed them together. The chunks of tuna in the tuna tartare weren't large or absorbent enough to soak up the flavour of the raw quail egg, fruit and alcohol dressing. The smoky, nutty taste of the black faced lamb was pleasing, but the coarse, crumbly texture was a little odd.

The salmon and avocado ceviche was largely a triumph. Although the buttery creaminess of both the fish and fruit blended together wonderfully and then enhanced by the bitterness of the citrus dressing, the effect was spoilt by some poorly chosen cuts of salmon and avocado. The undoubted highlight of the meal was the delightfully fluffy, creamy pana cotta flavoured with a hint of basil and a healthy dose of mango.

The bottom line is that Inamo isn't really a restaurant. It's a place for posers that happens to serve alright-ish food. Posers who are easily impressed by a half-baked computerised waitering system that needs to be sent back. If you really want Japanese food in stylish surroundings, Tsunami in Clapham or Fitzrovia are far better.

Alan Lu