SALTERN
FICTIONA tide-locked chef's counter on a Cornish headland. Twelve seats, one sitting a night, a menu written at low water and cooked at the flood. The whole site runs on the tide: a living video hero, a tasting menu laid out as a tide table, and a booking dial that never leaves the screen.
- Living video hero with type set into the swell
- Menu as tide table, timed course by course
- Bespoke SVG instruments: tide clock, bathymetry, depth scale
- Reads perfectly with motion off or JavaScript dead
LA GIROLLE DORÉE
INDEPENDENT CONCEPTA Michelin-starred restaurant that has held its star for decades, still trading on a website from another era. We rebuilt it as a concept: luminous ground, oversized serif, the wild larder made the heart of the story. The name is changed here; the work is real.
- Editorial hero: display serif against full-bleed larder photography
- Story chapters: the larder, the table, the books
- A la carte laid out as a document, not a PDF
- Reserve action pinned on every screen
CHOUETTE
INDEPENDENT CONCEPTA neighbourhood French bistro, open seven days, food this good deserved better than a stock theme. The concept leads with appetite: full-bleed table photography under a lowercase wordmark, and a carte typeset like the paper menu it should be.
- Appetite-first hero: the table, mid-service, edge to edge
- La carte as typeset document with honest prices
- Lunch and evening structured as le jour and le soir
- Book a table one tap from every viewport
FURROW
FICTIONA restaurant inside a Victorian walled garden in the Cotswolds, where the beds decide the menu. Four real pages with real navigation. The signature is an interactive plot map of the garden: choose a bed, see its crops, then the dish they become.
- Four pages: garden, table, notes, home
- Interactive SVG plot map, bed to crop to plate
- Menu rows that cite the bed each dish grew in
- Daylight editorial register, no video, all stills
OSIER
INDEPENDENT CONCEPTA starred, forage-led kitchen whose own website had gone dark. The concept treats the restaurant as a naturalist's field book: dishes pressed like specimens, the tasting menu as a numbered collection, ten years of seasons between the pages.
- Field book world: specimen cards, taped plates, pressed pages
- Tasting menu as a numbered collection, I to IX
- Ink ground with bone paper chapters
- The room, the story and the visit as field notes
BRAW
INDEPENDENT CONCEPTA neighbourhood kitchen and bar with a south east asian soul, brilliant branding, and a website that showed none of it. The concept sets the table: plates arrive, boards stamp down, the menu rolls past, and the room's own colours run the show. The name is changed here; the work is real.
- Every menu line verbatim from the printed boards
- Set-down motion: plates land, dockets stack, marquees roll
- Real photography; the palette measured from the room itself
- Reload-safe reveals, readable with JavaScript dead
SUMIBI
FICTIONA ten-seat yakitori counter that opens at midnight, laid out as a Japanese magazine issue. Six photographic spreads, huge vertical type, and a WebGL stage that burns each page into the next as you scroll, the seam glowing like the edge of lit paper.
- Six editorial spreads, vertical Mincho headlines
- WebGL noise-front page transitions, scrubbed by scroll
- Type on a path around the dish, the night's ledger in ten sticks
- A bone poster spread the shader itself fades to
Nothing here started as a layout.
Every concept starts from the restaurant itself: the cooking, the room, the story, the type and colour already on the walls. If you have a brand, it is measured, not guessed.
One idea strong enough to generate everything: a tide, a walled garden, a field book. Palette, type, motion and layout all come from that world, which is why no two builds look related.
Real pages, real menus, motion with a purpose, readable on a phone at the back of the bus. Fast, accessible, honest about what is photography and what is placeholder.
* What you are looking at: three fictional restaurants invented to show the range, and four independent concept rebuilds of real restaurants, renamed out of respect. This studio is new. The work is the credential.
What you actually get.
The pages above are the craft. This is the part worth knowing before you spend money with anyone. The studio is one designer, Jamie, in Bristol; you deal directly with the person doing the work.
A complete site designed around your restaurant: home, menu, story, hours, contact and booking. Built from the concept you have already seen and approved, then finished with your real menu, prices and photography.
Your booking system wired in, whether that is OpenTable, ResDiary, SevenRooms or a phone number you would rather people ring. Menus are built as real pages, not PDF uploads.
A fixed price and a delivery date agreed in writing before anything starts. Half on signing, half on completion, and nothing goes live until you have seen it finished. Cancel before work begins and the deposit comes straight back.
You do. On final payment the design, the code and the content created for the project transfer to you in full. Host it with the studio or take it anywhere else.
Thirty days of fixes after launch, covered. After that an optional monthly care plan handles hosting, backups and routine updates like menu changes and new photos.
Your menu with real prices, your opening hours, your logo and whatever photography you have. One short call or a few emails covers it. No meetings, no workshops.
Row eight is open.
If you run a high-end restaurant and your website is not doing your cooking justice, I will design you a concept for free.
Reply with your restaurant's name. I research the place, name the world, and build a first concept the way the seven above were built. You see it as a working page, not a slide deck. If it is not for you, that is the end of it and you keep the ideas.
Or write directly: jamie@signalstudios.uk