RESTAURANTS AS THEATRE

Alice Thomson

MY MOTHER has been making engage- ment chutney. Bananas, dates, prunes, crys- tallised orange, apples, cider, onions, spices, ginger, sultanas and demerara sugar have been simmering on the Aga for the last 24 hours.

She already has 1992, 1993 and 1994 engagement chutneys maturing in the larder. Now her youngest child, my sister Katie, is getting married this Christmas. Ever since Alex proposed to Katie through her snorkel while diving in Cuba, there have been earnest discussions about princess lines versus duchess lines, tiaras or tinsel.

My nieces (the bridesmaids) wanted to wear angel wings up the aisle, but these were vetoed by my father.

My role is as best woman. 'All you have to do is give a speech,' my sister explained. The problem was where to start. Katie and I were dressing in the same purple flares and red capes when we were five and went to the same schools, brownies and pony club camps (she was always a prefect, I was always expelled). She'd saved me from being raped on a mountain pass in Ladakh, and I'd rescued her from going into PR (she is now a BBC producer on Crime- watch). 'Can I mention the boyfriend who gave you a breadknife for Christmas?' I asked. Definitely not.

So we went out to dinner to discuss it. Inaho, a small wooden shack in Notting Hill Gate, was serving sushi and sashimi long before Yo! Sushi put beansprouts onto conveyor belts and Nobu started serv- ing salmon teriyaki to Madonna. Notting Hell-raisers may now have moved on to wheatgrass shots at Planet Organic, but this 16-seat restaurant still serves the freshest, cheapest raw fish in London to a mixture of Japanese students, local bachelors, vis- counts and taxi drivers.

The wooden walls are covered in kitsch. There's a cuckoo clock, a plastic snowman, a framed jigsaw puzzle of a geisha, and lots of shiny pot plants. The tables and chairs are pine, and the pristine kitchen can be glimpsed through a beaded curtain. It all reminded me of the early 1970s when my sister had a spacehopper and a slinky and insisted on wearing her nightie to play- school. 'I don't want anything embarrassing In this speech,' she said. `Not even the lederhosen we used to wear on holiday in Switzerland?' I asked as the cuckoo clock chimed. 'No.'

The waitress appeared with a tray of sake cups. We chose a bottle of ozeki sake, brewed in California, served warm. Our first choice was half an aubergine, sliced and grilled, to which miso sauce had been added. Eaten with a teaspoon, the flesh was soft, fibrous and succulent. It suddenly seemed the only way to taste this purple vegetable (far superior to Marco Pierre White or Gordon Ramsay's aubergine caviar and only £2.50).

We moved on to hand-rolled sushi two seaweed cornettos of rice, prawns and cucumber, then a plate of mixed sushi with mackerel, salmon and octopus, all cut with- in the last five minutes. My sister spat out the small yellow triangles. 'Oh my God, I've just eaten a fugu fish, it can be fatal,' she worried. It was a piece of omelette.

I thought we should have some yellowtail sashimi. 'I'm not eating slimy raw fish,' said my sister, who is so cool she has member- ship of the Met bar and was wearing Birkenstocks aged ten. But she's very fussy about her food. She was a roast chicken and spaghetti Bolognese child, and once only ate porridge for three months on a holi- day in India. So she had prawn tempura.

The yellowtail was slippery but melting. Her tempura was crinkle-cut and scorching. Our cooked salad, called aemeno, was made from a dressing of black and white sesame seeds, sugar and soy sauce ground in a pestle and mortar and served over finely cut French beans. Our kaboche turned out to be sweet pumpkin. Then we cheated and had a green and very Western salad with ripe avocados and baby gem lettuces. The Japanese waitress beamed. We could have ordered white sliced bread and she wouldn't have flinched.

The endless rounds of sake and sushi were so relaxing that we never discussed the speech. So the next week we decided to go shopping. We started at The Cross in Notting Hill Gate, buying bridesmaids' pre- sents, moved on to Mimis on the King's Road for a going-away dress, up to the Brompton Road for a coat and into Agnes B for a couple of pairs of work trousers. By then we were ravenous. Joe's Café on a Saturday is full of babes in £600 Bill Amberg sheepskin pouches and ladies with immaculate nail polish smoking Silk Cut. Joe was sitting at the bar puffing away on one of his cigars. His menu is one of the most ingenious in London, not because of the ingredients, which are now old hat, but because he has spent years scrutinising his customers and knows exactly what they want.

The starters and salads are for those female shoppers who have just humiliated themselves trying to squeeze into a small pair of flannel trousers at his shop, Joseph. Seared scallops with tequila dressing, chick- en Caesar salad, smoked chicken and rock- et, and seared foie gras with toasted brioche are for the determined XS. Penne with sun- dried tomato or smoked haddock risotto are ordered by Mediums.

The long-suffering men who are beginning to need an injection of testosterone after all the talk of grey being the new pink and khaki the new grey, order rib-eye steak bear- naise, beer-battered cod or Joe's burgers.

There are no twiddly, show-offy bits, which is probably a little boring for the chefs (like asking a hairdresser for a trim), but it is very relaxing for the diners. The mash is mash, the carpaccio comes with parmesan, there are no surprises and the quality of the ingredients — the wild mush- rooms for the risotto or the buffalo moz- zarella — is exceptional.

Katie had scallops, chips and tomato ketchup (on her first visit to a restaurant aged seven she demanded ketchup — we were at the Ritz with a great-aunt — it was brought to her in a silver bowl, she politely asked for a bottle). I had the goat's cheese salad which had come from a very mellow French goat, accompanied by soft Suffolk pears.

After three glasses of champagne, I still hadn't got any material for a speech. But I knew what I wanted to say: that my sister is the most fantastic friend, with the best legs and an extraordinary ability to juggle chips, champagne, ketchup and a cigarette while sorting out the entire kitchen rota, listening to the next-door table's marital break-up, and advising me on how to write this column.

Inaho, 4 Hereford Road, W2 (0171 221 8495), dinner for two £60.

Joe's Café, 126 Draycott Avenue, SW3 (0171 225 2217), lunch for two starts at £25.