Rita is soon to be leaving my London family so she planned a night out doing one my favourite activities … I bet you can’t guess what I’m talking about … did you guess it? Eating. Yes, eating. Our first stop was dinner at Inamo.

Inamo opened about a year ago during a period when it seemed that the hottest cuisine on the market was Pan-Asian or Modern Asian Fusion and as a result Inamo really had to come out into the market with a unique selling point to grab any of the market share – and they did. Its selling point is their interactive tables (because you can get the quality food and dominating black lacquer design in any of the other restaurants.) I first read about it in the Metro that you could play space invaders at your table whilst waiting for our dinner. Or even during dinner if you felt unsociable. Heh heh. This actually makes it a pretty good place for a first date as the table works as a kind of ice-breaker and conversation filler if you need one.

The table, however, can prove very distracting!

The four of us who made it to dinner, Rita, Rache, Marianna and I, probably spent the first half hour playing with the table, playing the memory game, watching the chef of the life kitchen cam, changing the wallpaper on the table and of course taking photos. We didn’t probably even look at the menu. Ordering, calling your waiter, asking for your bill is also performed via the table so in fact you don’t have to interact with your waiter at all except to get the food to your table and give you your bill.

Its great choosing your dinner and drinks as each item on the menu (as you scroll through it) comes up with a giant projected image on to your table. Although it takes a while to get through all the options at least you get an idea of what you’ll be receiving. It’s pretty cool technology. Tech geeks who want to know how the programmer went about setting up the system can read about his journey here (http://www.berniecode.com/writing/inamo-mouse-story/.)

Note that there is a 2 hour turn around on tables so don’t get carried away with playing!

If there is one draw-back to this style of dining is that, tonight at least, the service in the restaurant was not fantastic. Sure our food and drinks came out okay but then the waitresses kept trying to pick up our dishes even though we were clearly nowhere near finished. This got quite annoying after it happened a couple of times.

Food-wise we decided to share our dishes and that’s what is encouraged at Inamo anyway and actually how you should eat asian food. We started with duck pancake (of course – for the price it was the tiniest duck I’ve ever seen), pork rib (tasty), pork neck (best dish of the night) followed by mans of cinnamon chicken (surprisingly good and my second favourite of the night), crispy prawn and jungle curry (fairly average.) With a cocktail each our bill came to a hefty £27 each which was fairly expensive I thought considering we shared three starters and three mains between four people so it was effectively less than two courses each.

But overall its an interesting concept and fun for a one-off event or to show your London visitors something different. The food is actually quite good, if pricey, so at least its not gimmick only restaurant.

After dinner it was onwards to our dessert venue …