Inamo

We came here for a Bottomless Brunch. Small and intimate location, so perfect for those who don't want a really crowded and busy atmosphere. Really fun way of ordering food with the interactive ipads and tables - more restaurants should work in this way (in my opinion) as it means your meal runs at your pace and how you like it. Staff were great  so expect good service, price is good and food is tasty. 

One of my favourite eateries in central London when you are not sure where to go for a chat and a reliable chow down. Yes, the interactive projected visuals are a tad gimmicky, but they do create a pretty atmosphere to relax you straight off the crazy Oxford street and who doesn't want to play battleships while waiting for food! Speaking of the food, it's great, nothing spectacular, but super tasty! I love the shredded duck and tempura vegetables. Head downstairs for a giant cocktail afterwards!

I’ve been wanting to try the all you can eat dim sum here for quite some time and it didn’t disappoint! Having been to the Covent Garden branch before I had previously tried the a la Carte menu and knew all about the interactive tables (which are great fun!) but the all you can eat menu had a good range of around 29 dishes to choose from and you can order quite a few at a time meaning you basically have a constant stream of food! The only thing I would say is that there aren’t any dessert options on the all you can eat menu but to be honest I was so full I’m not sure I could have squeezed anything more in!

Unlimited Tapas and Sushi + Bottomless Beer and Wine

I had high expectations as i'd heard great things from my friends however I left feeling a little disappointed. 

The venue was small and cramped and the interactive dinner table felt old and outdated. The graphics and games were very old school.

The staff were ok, not overly friendly and would essentially throw the dishes at us and expect us to navigate the small table and place the food down/ stack up finished dishes. I know that sounds very snotty, however when your in the middle of eating and your hands are full, having a another plate in your face with the waiter not helping to make space is a bit annoying. 

The food overall was average but plentiful, dishes i'd recommend are the Crispy Tempura roll and the Beef Tataki. The service for food was pretty quick and in the hour and half we did manage to eat until we'd had enough, considering the price £39.95 including the beer and wine, i'd say we got our money's worth but nothing to shout home about. 

I was so disappointed with this branch of Inamo. I’ve gone to the Covent Garden one loads of times and always been happy with the food and service there so decided to come to this one for a change and have their bottomless brunch.

Unlike Covent Garden this one still uses the clunky ordering system on the e-tablecloth rather than the replacement iPads which are so much easier. So it’s no surprise that something went wrong and after 45 minutes I’d only received one of the dishes I’d ordered. Bearing in mind you only have your table for 90 minutes- this just isn’t good enough. Apparently our table’s orders, and the one next to us, weren’t going through.

We waited ages for the food and the food we did get wasn’t that great.

The beef tatami which is a favourite of mine was ice cold, like it had just come from the fridge. Same with the salmon.

To be fair the service was good, they dealt with all the complaints as best they could and we got an extension on our time when we asked for it, but I’ll not be visiting this branch again.

The biggest novelty of Inamo is their funky interactive tables where you order from their pan-asian menu. It’s definitely a fun and quirky place to have a first date and get the conversation going.

What we had: 

• Soft Shell Crab Maki Rolls
• Marinated Salmon Belly Nigiri
• Beef Tataki: Rare British rib-eye steeped in ginger and ponzu sauce.
• Sea Bream & Red Pepper Sauce
• Passionate Martini cocktail
• inamo Spark cocktail

The soft shell crab maki rolls were a little disappointing as they weren’t full of flavour and were quite minimal in ingredients. The salmon belly nigiri was very melt in your mouth - go easy on the soy sauce for this one, or better yet, leave it out altogether to get the full natural fatty flavour. The beef tataki was good, though I would have preferred a bit more salad on the side and dressing on it. The star of he show was definitely the sea bream - it was cooked perfectly and the sauce had a nice zesty zing. The cocktails are nice and boozy and overall this place had a good atmosphere, albeit a bit dark given the projections required for the interactive tables.

Tip: they also have a bar area so you can have a few pre drinks before dinner.

Good For: something different, date night, small groups.

This place is a fun place to go to if you love playing games with your friends and eating. It is reasonably priced and the food is ok but its all about the atmosphere and having fun at the table with this place more than anything else.  I would recommend though for a party/group of friends. 

I’ve been last week to Inamo for a friend’s birthday. I really enjoy the interactive tables, but I have to admit this is taking ages to pick your food as you can only see one dish per one.

As we arrived for an early dinner, we picked the set menu being one soup, starter, main and dessert.

The starter I took was some prawns and calamari tempura but it wasn’t really good. The main was definitely catastrophic; I opted for marinated pork which was at my bad surprise extremely dry and the sauce hadn’t a good taste. My friend’s Singaporean noodles were too salty and the desserts were nothing exceptional.

The only good dish was a small plate of marinated fried chicken we took on the side.

The service was not that better than the food; twice, the waiter removed my plate and chopsticks without asking while I was still eating; impossible to get water, and when they finally gave water to the table they gave us only 3 glasses when we were 5, and never came back.

For the quality of the food and the service they are offering, I can’t justify the price! Of course the interactive tables are fancy but I prefer good food in my plate and will never go back!

Firstly, when I arrived, the hostess asked whether it was my first time dining here. To which I replied yes it was. She then proceeded to inform me quite curtly that the restaurant operated a 90 minute reservation policy and that she would need the table back after that.

After seating me, she simply left me in the lower room by myself. There was no explanation as to how the touch-screen menu on the table worked until my friend arrived and we had to ask her how to operate it.

My friend and I then proceeded to place our orders, getting a few tapas each so we could share and a drink each. As we ordered different drinks, we asked the waiter which was which when he arrived with them. To which he replied that they were both the same, when they clearly weren’t – although they did look the same. 

The food arrived pretty quickly and was decent in flavour and taste. Between the two of us, we ordered the following:

1. Vegetable Tempura – Deep-fried vegetables coated in a Japanese style batter. This came served with a special tempura dipping sauce and included vegetables such as sweet potato, mushrooms, asparagus, and courgette. This is a pretty standard Japanese dish and it came out warm and crispy, which was lovely.
2. Chicken Karaage – Another typical Japanese dish, although this version was more sweet and sticky than the traditional version. It was coated in a thick and sweet marinade, which was a little too salty but still tasted good. The skin of the chicken was extremely crunchy from the sweet marinade and from being fried!
3. Dragon Roll – A set of maki rolls that come in 8 pieces and filled with shrimp tempura, and topped with avocado and mayo. This was pretty average in taste, nothing spectacular in my opinion.
4. California Roll – Another typical Western interpretation of Japanese maki rolls. These were filled with soft shell crab and had some avocado and mayo too. Not a dish I would order again because it wasn’t that great.
5. Char Sui Buns – I wanted to try this because it’s my favourite steamed bun to have at dim sum. They were served steaming and tasted pretty fresh until the buns cooled down and the exterior of the bun actually hardened considerably – to the point where I couldn’t eat it because it was that stiff. But when they were still warm, they were pretty ok – the BBQ meat on the inside didn’t have the correct balance between sweet and savoury.
6. Yum Buns – This was probably my favourite dish that we ordered. The steamed buns were really warm and still steaming when they were served, which is great, and they had the softest and bounciest texture. The beef brisket was presented on a plate with a bowl of salad and the various dipping sauces. The meat was excellent and most pieces were pretty lean, which I liked. However the spicy/hot sauce was simply too salty – to the point where my friend and I couldn’t even have any. The hoisin sauce and sweet sauce were lovely though.
7. Shrimp & Vegetable Dim Sum – This is a pretty standard combination of flavours found in dim sum dumplings so I thought it would taste nice but this was a bit of a disappointment. The skin on the dumplings was hard on the edges but soft in the middle, which made it taste and look like they were frozen and simply re-heated. It also lacked flavour, as I had to dip them into soy sauce and chili sauce to taste anything.

I definitely won’t be coming back again because the concept seemed a lot more interesting online than it is in reality. The restaurant is also quite cramped in the sense that I couldn’t even get out of my seat without having to ask 3 other clients to get up in order for me to get through. An overall disappointing experience to be honest, which is a shame. 

Just say No to Inamo.

We had the timeout voucher offer, which unfortunately ended up being very disappointing. We arrived and the staff were all completely stressed literally rushing around looking very hot a bothered. It was not a good or pleasant atmosphere to walk into, and certainly not what we wanted from our afternoon, which was meant to be a treat. We were asked to wait downstairs in the bar as our table was not ready without much of a welcome. Not that you could really call it a bar, it was a dark room with no one there to offer us a drink, and later staff were using it to sleep when I visited the bathroom. We declined and were told to come back in 10 minutes. 

I love technology and really liked the idea of interactive ordering from your table. However when we did eventually get to the table, the table was cracked around the touch pad, our menu was faulty and you had to keep coming out and back in to scroll. If they were unable to cope with the offer they had sold people, they should never have run the offer. You could pick from a set menu, on ordering it came to light they have all the dishes waiting as they appeared within a few seconds, the dumplings were hard from being kept warm and there was nothing fresh about the sushi rolls. All in all a really disappointing experience the food does not deliver, the whole place looks as though it needed a clean and a lick of paint, scuffed walls and all a little tired. There are much better Asian food places in Soho, and much better value for money.