Best for...a potentially bad date

Picture it. You’ve been set up – stitched up like a kipper – by that friend who insists on playing matchmaker. “I know someone you’d just love,” they say, about a different eligible singleton each week: a rotating menu where nothing is appetizing and you’d rather just eat takeaway alone.

Metaphors aside, you’re going out to dinner and you’d rather not be. My advice – go to Inamo, in Soho. It’s built on talking points.

The lighting
It’s dark and sort of mysterious of an evening.

The food
Friends had been telling me for ages to try the pork neck, which comes with a spicy chocolate sauce, and the black cod main. I'm glad I listened to them. 

The menu
At Inamo you don’t get a menu handed to you. It’s projected on to the table. And you get to frantically click away at it and see pictures of all the dishes appear on a plate in front of you. (The plate is also projected.) That in itself can provide a whole evening’s worth of chatter. If it doesn’t, well you can play Battleships on the table. And if the date is a complete dud, you can even order a taxi.

But all in all, you should have enough entertainment to make every moment of silence more golden than awkward.