Pasta, plated by the sea.
Trattoria warmth meets coastal calm. A menu site that feels printed, not built.
A Bondi pasta bar that wants to feel like a neighbourhood trattoria, not a generic Italian restaurant chain. The site needs to surface the menu without making people scroll forever, take bookings, and look beautiful on the phone of someone walking past at 7pm.
The typefaces.
A two-typeface system. One for personality, one for utility. Both pulled from Google Fonts, both load in under 100ms on a 4G connection.
A wide-cut italic serif carries the warmth of hand-lettered menus and signage. Used at large display sizes for hero and dish names.
A clean, modern sans for menu items, descriptions, and prices. Tight numbers, no contest with the display serif.
Five colours.
A palette tight enough to be unmistakable, broad enough to handle every layout the site will need. Tested at WCAG AA contrast against the body copy.
The layout.
Four key moments on the homepage. Each does one job, set in the order most visitors will need them.
Hand-set italic display type frames the personality. No stock pasta photo. Just type, paper texture, restraint.
Two columns of dishes with prices, set in clean sans alongside the display italics. Customers can scan in seconds.
Cal.com module integrated below the menu. No pop-ups, no separate page, just one tap to lock a table.
Map, address, opening hours laid out for someone walking past at 7pm trying to decide right now.
The full homepage.
What I would do for a real client.
This case study is a design concept. If we built it for an actual casual italian business, here is how the work would extend.
A photographer shoot before launch. Real plates of food shot in natural window light, four to six hero images. Stock food photos would undo all of this.
The tendency to put a big slideshow at the top. Restaurants often want eight rotating photos of the dining room. One strong image, or none, is more memorable.
Cal.com integration over Square or Resy because of clean embed code, no fees, and zero customer-side branding bleed.
Ready to see what your site could look like?
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