High-tech oriental – not a great advert for technology

Looking for somewhere for a mid-afternoon “lunch” after a visit to the Bronzes exhibition at the RA (very good by the way), my researches threw up Inamo St James  in Lower Regent St (there is a sister Inamo Soho restaurant too).  It describes itself as an “Oriental fusion” restaurant and the menu looked interesting and pretty reasonably priced for that area.  But intriguingly all the comments on the Top Table website were about its interactive ordering system, called e-Table.  Not sure whether that’s a good sign or not (surely the food’s the point?) but I thought we’d give it a go.

It’s about 3pm on a Sunday when we get there.  There are more people in there than you might expect at that time, but it is a large place, so there should be no problems getting a table. But the waiter asks us to wait at the bar (without a drink!), so the stress levels start to rise.  

Eventually we do get shown to a table – not a great position, but never mind – and the fun starts.  The décor of place generally is very attractive – lots of smallish areas partitioned off by bamboo. But it is the table itself that is the speciality – it is interactive.  The waitress asks if we’ve eaten there before, and then proceeds to give as a quick demonstration of how the thing works.  Basically there is a touch pad for each of us which controls a cursor over the menu (ie system menu). From there you can select drinks, food, games etc, and a help/bill section.  You also get to change the “ambiance”, that is the background colour and design on the table if you wish – we stick with the bright snowflake design the waitress has chosen.

Now I like to think of myself as reasonably tech-literate, so I’m happy to give this a go.  I start by ordering some wine.  The cursor control is OK, but tapping the table to select seems a bit erratic. Anyway I do manage to find the white wine and scroll through in blocks of 4. Here one of the limitations of the system first appears – you can only see 4 options at a time, so can’t scan the whole list. Still, with wine that’s not too much of a problem, and I successfully order a Viognier at £26.

Then I start to order the “small plates”.  (Not “starters” as such, since we’re told the food arrives when it is ready).  Somehow random choices seem to pop up on my list, and I have to cancel them.  Again you can see only 4 options at a time (though you do get a big picture of one shining on your plate). This makes it harder to choose which combination to go for, but eventually we manage to select the crispy prawns, pork and apple dumplings and edamame beans (from the “sides” list).

Then comes the second limitation. The waiter arrives saying that they have run out of Viognier – it's not that interactive a system then.  A rapid review of the list is tricky to do, so I bail out and ask for a written wine list.  From there I choose the NZ Sauvignon Blanc (also £26) which had not appeared on the system. They’ve none of that either, so we end up with the Argentinian Torrontes at £19.

I now turn to the “larger plates” or main courses as we might say.  The 4 option limitation is really irritating now (bearing in mind we’ve not had a drink yet!), and stress levels are rising further.   I’m also struggling with tapping the table to select the option – softly and nothing happens, too hard and I feel I’m going to dislocate a finger.  (I once came away injured from trying to use an IcelandAir check-in terminal, as you had to hit the screen so hard –it took  4 months for my finger to recover!).  Soon I seem to have ordered a spatchcock chicken I didn’t want, and 4 portions of a beef dish. So I use the “Help” bell to call a waitress (logical problem here: if you can’t use the system you can’t call for help!). This seems to take a while and we’re on the point of leaving.  When the waitress does arrive, she says she’ll sort it out, and tells me not to hit the table so hard !

Finally I am able to order the cinnamon chicken, “beef beri bop”, and steamed rice. Actually there aren’t that many side dish options, so this feels a little limited.

The food – and drink – does now start to arrive. Small plates/starters do come first.  And very good they are too, though the projectionof the design onto the table makes the dishes look a funny colour.  The dumplings are full of melting pork, accompanied by a really flavourful apple and cinnamon/clove sauce on a spoon. The crispy prawns are in a nice light batter and come with a very spicy dip. And the edamame beans dish is ample, accompanied by a sweetish dip.  The Torrontes too is good –creamy and fruity – though perhaps anything would have seemed good by now!

As it turns out, the timing of the dishes works OK, as we’ve not long finished the starters (sorry) when the cinnamon chicken and steamed rice arrive.  The chicken (described as “poussin” on the detailed menu) is tender strips of breast, covered in a dark, dry crust, and accompanied by a spicy, dry salt on a spoon (again).  It’s very tasty indeed.

We’re making inroads into the chicken when the beef dish arrives.  This is the most spectacular of the lot.  The waiter brings a small hot dish containing slices of beef, rice, asparagus slices and a raw egg yolk. He pours over this a ginger and vinegar sauce and starts to cook the beef on the hot dish, and mix the rice and egg together.  The effect is nicely cooked slices of beef (not large or especially tasty, but quite good) on a tasty bed of rice, which has crunchy bits in it – presumably from cooked egg white. 

We polish off the beef, and the rest of the chicken, and indeed all the rice. Had we realised, we probably wouldn’t have ordered the extra rice, and maybe gone for spicy aubergines instead.

Finally I manage to ask for the bill through the system, and it duly arrives - £73. Given the location, we think that is very good value for very good food and a nice wine (even though it wasn’t what we originally chose) in pleasant surroundings, and I would certainly recommend what we had.

And the verdict on the technology?  Well, it feels like a gimmick really.  Its plus points are that you can see larger pictures of what you might choose, that you shouldn’t have to call a waiter, and that it is easy to ask for the bill. Minus points for the limitation of presenting 4 options at a time and the dodgy controls – and the lack of integration with stock control.  We didn’t play with the other features: I can’t see why you’d want to change the “ambiance”, especially with a “shuffle” option; a couple at the next table were using it to play games –duh!; and the “chef cam” option was only showing an empty room when I looked.   Without it all, we’d have come away impressed – as it was the stress levels had only just returned to normal when we finished our wine.