Inamo, Wardour Street

Hello all. The first Meal Club of 2009 was somewhere that had been on the "potentials" list for a while now so we thought we'd give it a go. Inamo is, to be frank, a gimmick restaurant. The Japanese food it serves is nothing too out of the ordinary, but what sets it apart is the ordering system. In my opinion, any restaurant whose USP is centred around anything apart from the food is destinated for inevitable failure. But more on that later. We were:

Becca
James
Laura
Mamps
Vicki
Pete

When making the booking we were informed that there's be a £5 per person fee for cancellations within 24 hours (bad) and that we could only have the table for 2 hours (worse). They clearly haven't read about this campaign...but then again, since I spotted it I haven't heard about it since. When we arrived (Laura and I took up the mantle of Linz's absence by being late), they told us generously we could have the table for 2 and a half hours. Whoop-dee-do!

So the ordering system.... They do have waiting staff but their jobs are minimal. They show you to your table and bring you your food, but otherwise that's it. Everything is centred around your table which has a projecter above beaming down images. Each table has its own little mouse pad which you use to order your food and drink, change the table "wallpaper", access "chef-cam", keep an ongoing eye on your bill total and get beaten at battleships if you're Pete playing Laura.

It's certainly a fun way to entertain yourself during the meal. Because if you try to entertain yourself using the company of your friends you may struggle. The tables are way too far apart such that on our table of 6, we struggled to talk to the people at the other end. The atmosphere generally was quite weak - harsh lighting, not much "buzz". The restaurant itself looked like it wasn't designed for this purpose and that they'd shoved in tables wherever they could.

I've been a bit critical so far so it's worth mentioning that the food itself was very tasty. For starters we had seafood gyoza, prawns, beef in green oil, tofu, ribs and other stuff like edamame (which we decided tastes nice because of the salt and not the beans). All of them were pretty good to great. Can't complain about anything apart from portion size which was small.

Manpreet entertained the group in her usual fashion by asking us what we would do for cold, hard cash. In this instance it was about indecent proposals. According to James' notes on the night, Laura wouldn't sleep with her brother for anything but Becca would sleep with Will's dad for £7.23. We also talked about Derren Brown and doing impressions of Star Wars characters with your penis.

Mains were also good (lamb chops, veggie red curry, black cod, pork with chocolate sauce...) as were the deserts (particularly my weird black sticky rice with mango and citrus sorbet, although not so much Laura and Becca's weird green macaroon thingy)...but the problem was value for money. As great as it all was, I couldn't reconcile it with a bill well in excess of £200. No way muchacho. Not good enough. I suspect we were still paying for the overhead(s) projecters. Plus they charged 10% service sir! For what exactly? They do nothing that the good people at Nandos don't:

I'd go back if work was paying but not otherwise.

ps. Peggy doesn't eat bogies.