Design in Restaurant Menus
During my morning read of the Guardian, I came across this restaurant review of The Salt Room by Jay Rayner. Rayner has a gift for the written word; combining humour and acerbic wit with an ability to convey flavour and sensation.
What interested me in this particular review was the following paragraph:
"But the menu at the Salt Room kept dragging me back in. It was not just the smart use of boxed-off areas, designed to draw my eye this way and that: over here for oysters and fruits de mer, over there for singed offerings from the Josper grill. It was the unlikely combination of a basic seaside brasserie proposition and something altogether more ambitious."
The Salt Room menu
It's a nice reminder of the power of design. Here it achieves two things; presenting information in a clear and easy to follow manner, and secondly to convey an emotion, a feeling. It gives Rayner an emotional reaction to the food before he's had the opportunity to even taste it.
It's a lesson to remember and apply.
Have a look at this curated collection of Menu designs from BP&O. Appetising.