Inamo

The touchscreen ordering service is a bit of a novelty which makes your first visit to Inamo fun and interesting. I think it's a bit of a fad though and when it comes to the food, it's fairly standard Westernised Japanese cuisine. Slightly over-priced, but i'd recommend going once – just for the fun of it!

A girl friend and I went here for a pre night on the town on Saturday night and it was a brilliant, fun way to start the evening! The techy, self order table top menu was interesting and a great way to peruse the menu. The food was delicious and presented in a most beautiful way. The waiter was exquisitely nice and polite, and took the time to properly explain every dish served and matched wines with our orders. Stand out dishes was the Fish Buri Bop (cook it on a hot plate to your liking!) and the Black Cod. Even though the ordering is placed firmly in your hand the staff are professional and knowledgeble enough to guide you too. The atmosphere was buzzy with great music and the place packed as to be expected in restaurant on Wardour Street on a Saturday. We spent around £39 per head all in, which felt reasonable for the quality of the food and and service.

Overall, highly recommended! – I'll be back!

I was looking forward to going to this restaurant for ages.

We booked for 6.30pm and were told a couple of times we had to be out by 8pm. But after turning up at a quarter past 6 and deciding to take our seats (in the completely empty restaurant) anyway, we were told that we now had to be out by 7.45pm. I found that a little petty…

The novelty of actually ordering soon wears off and you find yourself browsing through all the options as opposed to actually catching up with your friend. Which might be good for a first date or something I suppose…

At 7.30pm we were Interrupted mid-conversation by the rather rude hostess who told us, again, that we had to be out by 7.45pm… Yes, we knew that because you keep telling us!

We were then automatically charged a whopping 10% service charge on an already ridiculously over priced meal. This was strange because all the staff did was remind us we had to leave and bring us our food in dribs and drabs. We were tempted to not pay the service charge it but we're probably too nice and only short-changed them about 50p in the end.

Food is pretty nice but nothing that special. there are a few asian restaurants in soho (like the gorgeous one accross the road from Inamo) where the food is much better…

I won't be back. Good for novelty purposes I suppose but I use a computer all day long, I don't want to have to ‘order online’ when I got to a restaurant. Pretty much an expensive gimmick.

(This is the first time I have ever felt compelled to write a review about anything by the way and I am not a typical website moaner!)

On business in the UK my two SA colleagues joined my wife and I for one of the best meals ever experienced. We chose to share a number of the smaller dishes and were literally blown away!! Each dish elicited oohs and aahs and for people who spend a great deal of our time eating out this was pure pleasure. The food is absolutely exceptional; try the ribs, pork, chicken, mushrooms!

Well done to all the friendly and attentive staff at Inamo. An honest unexpected delight and I usually don't spend my time waxing lyrical about restuarants. Oh, and the wine and cocktails were very good too.

Its mostly been said but this is a triumph of technology over food and service, precisely the reverse of what I want when in a restaurant. My colleague and I ordered at precisely the same moment but his main course took half an hour longer to arrive than mine which rather destroyed the concept of sharing a meal. The boot faced staff – and who wouldn't be, being the human end of the all too pervasive machine – were not helpful in addressing this or doing anything very much other than serving up the bill. I won't be back.

The first obstacle with this place is finding it, so it may be worth noting that it is at the Oxford Circus end of Wardour Street and not Shaftesbury Avenue end as I'd initially thought. Arriving at lunch time is a bit strange as the interior is very dark and the infamous lit interactive tables arent really and functional until you sit down and begin to order.

The tables themselves are the key reason for eating here really… Its all a bit conceptualised and the fact the food happens to be pretty decent is just lucky really. Using the touch-screen interactive system on the tables, you can order food and drink, call a waitress (although it was faster to just wave to get their attention), you can play games and also change the colour or ‘skins’ of your table to lots of varied bright backgrounds.

But I ask you, is this really what you want to be doing over dinner??? Ignoring your fellow diners and fiddling with screen after screen of options? It can be quite tedious to have to figure it all out, and I did begin to wish I could just get a normal menu! The fact that we had to move because our first table wasn't working was also rather annoying but not enough to put me off the experience.

The food is your bog standard combo of Sushi, Asian-inspired salads and dishes and lots of interesting plates. Not bad at all, very decent in fact. They also do a good selection of cocktails, which is always great especially if you arent rushing through a meal and want to enjoy it. But then again, if you are planning on having a hurried meal, then Inamo is not really the right venue for you.

Inamo is worth visiting. Not for a romantic meal or for a very special occasion but for a casual bite to eat and fun. The concept is new in the UK (to my knowledge) and ideal for a friend or family member visiting London for something unique and entertaining they will talk about. Gimmekery aside, the food is actually quite good and the the ability to be able to order a drink at the push of a button or more dishes as required ensured that after we had finished playing battleships our converasation was not interrupted once. I like it.

I had booked a table for 8, and on arrival was told that due to the projector system we were going to be seated at a table for 4 and 2 tables of 2! I had heard nothing of this during the booking process, despite numerous phone calls for them to secure my credit card details for the ‘cancellation policy’??
Although there was nobody sitting at the tables we were later assigned to, we were sent downstairs to the bar initially to have drinks, despite arriving at the time we had booked for.
When I expressed my unhappiness re the table situation to the staff, they were rude and unhelpful. Definitely not a place I would recommend.

I would agree with Oleg O's review. The concept is great, the execution is very poor.

If you want to pay for gimmickry then Inamo is the place, I can't say the service was exceptionally poor but ordering did feel a bit like a game of lucky dip, pick your food on the screen and see what dish they choose to serve you (DO NOT trust the pictures! Having said this with the slightly twisted humour of the lucky dip game maybe the food didn't look anything like what was ordered because it wasn't – I will never know).

A few things that I didn't like about the place:
1. The tables are very bright (although you can change this to softer settings, the game here is to figure out how to do it before your retinas burn).
2. You have to scroll through EVERY single item of food before ordering in order to make sure you haven't missed something you might like – I know you do this with a normal menu but with the gadgetry they use it takes an eternity.
3. The selection of food is not as extensive as you would find in the average Asian restaurant.
4. There is no option for tap water (which means you have to interact with the waiting staff, something i think they take offence to).
5. Having a drink such as an orange juice & lemonade requires you to pay for two drinks.
6. Overpriced.

Positives:
1. Playing battleships across the table is great fun and kills off any slight chance there was of having conversation over dinner.

All in all it could be SO much more than it is with a few tweaks here and there, as it is though I wouldn't consider ever going back as I would prefer to spend equivalent money in a top end restaurant like Chez Bruce (Wandsworth).

Great fun. Food/drink ordering, games and chef-cam etc on tables make for a real talking point. The progressive music policy on the night we visited suited me perfectly, well done to whoever is in charge of that. Food was certainly good enough but its the atmosphere, technology and service which shine through. Not sure I'll be a regular as the price makes it a treat rather than a place to pop in to. If you want somewhere new to try which will guarantee a great evening, this is your place.

It is worth going along for the fun factor. The whole concept is very fun and enjoyable. The options to see pictures of the menu, the webcam, games and being able to change the ambiance of the table (we changed ours to match my outfit!) are all great and very funky!
Ordering was easy and there was no delay in receiving food (even on a really busy Friday night). Being able to check your bill as you go along is also a plus point, it also shows you the cost of what you have ordered as well as the overall total, which is handy if splitting the bill between friends. Service was ok, we were asked to wait in the bar for 10 minutes for our table and were given complientary nibbles while we waited. There was a nice fun buzz in the restaurant.
The downside is that the food is very average and slightly overpriced, there was nothing particularly bad about it, it just felt average and nothing stood out. As the prices are in between that of Wagamamma's and Nobu, I expected the food to match but I felt that the standard of food was the same as Wagamamma's but almost double the price.
It is still worth a visit for the novelty factor as it really is a very cool idea and I really enjoyed the evening on the whole, just don't expect to have mind blowing food. You'll come away talking about the excitement of the projectors rather than anything else.

Nice place with unusual settings, good food, but horrible service.
In fact we had never felt so humiliated by the restaurant staff in our life!
The manager was very rude, waiting staff tried to serve at least 3 times the food we didn't ordered, and we had to use their “high tech” system to prove we hadn't ordered those items (all of them were from the tables around us).
We spent about £200 without alcohol-I would not say it was cheap dining. However, when we left the place, we‘d been chased on the street by the same manager running after us and shouting my surname – such an embarrassing moment in my life. Apparently they undercharged us and it had to be explained and sorted out on the street – awful experience! Food? We do not remember it in such a circumstances!
In summary: The idea is good, value is lacking and service is awful.
It's safe to say I won't be coming back again and I will make sure (with some help from the same modern technology – e-mails and facebook) that all my friends won't come here.
It's a big shame that such a place could get good reviews, and it's on tsquaremeal list at all!

Great food and affordable bubbles with a side dish of battleships to fill the gaps when the conversation has dried out… Be gone with pushy waiters and order you own with the interactive menu projected onto the table – the only dilema is wether or not one should add a service charge for a service that isn't technically provided!

Inamo certainly has a novelty value with its computerised tables and waiterless ordering system. There is staff on hand if you need assistance and they were efficient and happy to help. The food however, was pretty disappointing. I tried the dishes recommended and although it tasted OK was disappointed to find that the Vietnamese rolls were deep fried (the description didn't mention how they would be cooked and the projectoin on the table was too grainy to tell). The marbled beef was chewy, tasteless and swimming in olive oil and was quickly sent back as it was almost inedible. The blackened cod however, saved the day and was delicious. Overall, the concept is original and fun but the food was not good enough to warrant a second visit.

17/09/08

The concept of digital ordering is certainly new which is the sole reason I came here. You order via your table on a digital system where you can also change your tablecloth colour & pattern, play games with your partner, peek on the chefs on the webcam or even order the bill or a taxi-service. (Just make sure you get a tissue to wipe the little touch pad because the waiters absolutely do not clean that bit – we checked them cleaning two tables to make sure). The decor is nice with tinted lights to create a nice atmostphere and apparently the ground level has a capacity of 60 ppl with 70 ppl capacity in the basement bar.

There is only a catch. Value for money is rock bottom as each dish costs £6 upwards (steak would cost you around £15 as a main course) but the portions are minute. The service standard really leaves much to be desired – the manager must've thought good experienced waiters/waitresses aren't needed because you'll mainly be ordering from the "touch-table".

Service is dire. When you book this place they assign you a table to sit at and it seems that no matter what you want you'll be placed at that table. I arrived at 6.30pm and the place only had about 6 customers, out of a ground level capacity for about 60. However, we weren't allowed to sit at the cushioned sofa bit at the corners because…they have parties arriving at 8pm!

During the meal, the waitress tried to take away my dish as I was still holding food with my pair of chopsticks. The waiter who gave me the cardreader machine when I asked for a bill actually disappeared after giving me the machine!! He was so busy helping a new group of arrivals! They had 5-6 waiters/waitresses that I could see and I didn't understand why this guy had to leave our table for that? In the end I did the whole process myself, including printing the merchant receipt and the customer receipt. My dining partner also commented that I could easily have clicked refund on my card straight away since the waiter didn't bother coming back until we both got up and left.

In summary: The idea is good, the food is ok but nothing to be praised for. It isn't authentic and portions are small. Value is lacking and service needs a lot of help.

It's safe to say I won't be coming back again and I won't tell my friends to come here.