12. L'Encant, Spain
The menus at L'Encant sushi bar were created by Spanish design agency Nuria Vila (opens in new tab). Designed to reinforce the restaurant's blend of Japanese and Catalan culture, the team developed this concept, which pays homage to Japanese folding fans. Inside the wooden cover, menus are printed on stone paper.
13. Fade St. Social, Dublin
Illustrator Steve Simpson (opens in new tab) is the man behind this vibrant menu design for Fade Street Social in Dublin. The gorgeous drawings conveys the restaurant's quality food and fun, relaxed atmosphere and showcases the unique Irish character and sense of humour brilliantly.
14. Mr Brown, Mexico
Jerome and Zimmerman (opens in new tab) create and renew brands. And that's exactly what the creative duo did recently for Mexican restaurant Mr Brown. Instead of just acting as a source of information, the pair redesigned the menus to become part of the restaurant's decor, creating wooden boards with menu pages attached and letters on the reverse spelling out its name.
15. Smith, Toronto
Smith is a restaurant and club located in Gay Village in downtown Toronto. Its unique menu design resembles a newspaper, featuring a large, easily readable font and black-and-white photographs of the food on offer. Created by graphic designer Tracy Ma (opens in new tab), who currently works at Bloomberg Businessweek, the menu is set to change seasonally.
16. Eleven Madison Park, New York
This minimal and elegant menu design appeared on the tables of New York-based restaurant Eleven Madison Park until late last year. Created by designer, educator and author Juliette Cezzar (opens in new tab), the 28-word food menu featured 16 principal food ingredients for customers to choose from.
17. Fat Cow, Singapore
Fat Cow is a beef-speciality restaurant that follows the Japanese method of cooking and serving beef. Inspired by the Japanese notion of 'Wabi Sabi', an aesthetic based on underplayed modesty, creative agency Foreign Policy (opens in new tab) came up with the concept of delivering its menus on wooden planks. The menu design also captured the style of the restaurant's food perfectly, with the laser etchings on the wood reminiscent of the branding of cattle.
18. Cafe Kafka, Barcelona
Creative studio Lo Seinto (opens in new tab) created these gorgeous menu designs for Mediterranean food restaurant Cafe Kafka in Barcelona. The menu covers feature beautiful illustrations, each of which tell a story as to what is held over the page. And the insides are just as impressive, featuring illustrations and type that showcase the restaurant's rich and vintage character beautifully.
19. Maddigan's Freehouse, London
Art director and graphic designer Aaron Kitney (opens in new tab) was the man behind this eye-catching menu design for traditional British pub Maddigan's. Kitney comments on his website: "The main focus for this project was to revamp the identity to draw in additional clientele, while maintaining loyal patrons.
To achieve this, the existing atmosphere and experience was enhanced by using sophisticated type in a traditional setting. The combination of modern and gothic faces alludes to the past without sacrificing legibility."
20. Aroma, Menorca
This minimal menu design was created by Barcelona-based graphic designer Eren Saracevic (opens in new tab) for Spanish gastro lounge Aroma. Wanting to develop a totally distinguishable menu, Saracevic concentrated entirely on the food, dedicating a whole page to each dish and using the Gotham typeface to describe it. He also decided to feature a simple illustration of a nose on the cover to give more importance to the content.
21. 13 Wives, Singapore
This unique drinks menu is one of our favourite concepts. As well as being the name of speciality cocktail bar in Singapore, 13 Wives is the fictional story of the 13 women who inspire each drink found in this little black book. Another design from creative agency Foreign Policy (opens in new tab), the team hand assembled and printed 35 copies in total.
Contributions: Creative Bloq staff
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