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MENU DESIGN

Restaurants: designing menus people actually order from

Two restaurant menus, two very different problems: a bilingual sushi lab with tasting sets, and a Japanese-meets-burger mash-up.

Role
Menu design
Client
Unique Sushi Lab · Menu Bar Lighthouse
Year
2019–2022

Unique Sushi Lab

Unique Sushi Lab's menu covers a wide range, sashimi, niguiri, and uramaki sold individually, alongside three chef-curated tasting sets ("Lab One," "Lab Fusion," "Lab Lx") for people who'd rather not build their own order piece by piece. Designed bilingually in Portuguese and English throughout, since the restaurant serves both local and international guests, with pricing and portion counts (2, 4, 6, 8 pieces) laid out consistently enough that a first-time customer can compare options without needing the server to explain the whole card.

Unique Sushi Lab menu page listing lab specials, uramaki and chef-selected tasting sets, in Portuguese and English
Unique Sushi Lab menu page listing starters and hot dishes, in Portuguese and English

The full card, sashimi and uramaki priced by piece count, starters and hot dishes on their own page, both languages side by side throughout.

Unique Sushi Lab menu open on a restaurant table next to chopsticks, soy sauce and cherry blossoms
Unique Sushi Lab menu cover closed on a stone counter, with cherry blossom branches and a tea setting alongside it

Open and closed, on an actual table: the goldfish cover and the inner spread both hold up away from a flat mockup.

The tasting sets in particular needed their own visual weight, since they're the higher-margin, easier-decision option for a restaurant, so the layout gives "Lab One," "Lab Fusion," and "Lab Lx" a clear moment of their own rather than burying them as three more rows in a long list.

Unique Sushi Lab tasting sets page: Lab One, Lab Fusion and Lab Lx with photography and piece breakdowns
Unique Sushi Lab delivery and takeaway flyer promoting the 22-piece executive menu

Lab One, Lab Fusion and Lab Lx given their own photography-led page, plus a delivery flyer built off the same visual system.

Unique Sushi Lab menu pages laid out and photographed as a tilted flat-lay, showing how the print pieces actually sit next to one another

The pages laid out and photographed together: how the set actually reads as a stack, not just as isolated flat exports.

Menu Bar Lighthouse

Menu Bar Lighthouse sits in a different niche: a food-and-drink concept blending Japanese dishes (temaki, poke) with burgers, two categories that don't usually share a menu. Built around a collage-style visual language, which let the design acknowledge that mash-up directly instead of pretending the menu is more conventional than it is.

Menu Bar Lighthouse cocktails, shots and drinks page in a torn-paper beach collage style
Menu Bar Lighthouse burger, sushi bar, poke and temaki page in the same collage style

Cocktails and burgers on one system, sushi and poke on the other: the torn-paper collage is what lets both halves of the menu sit together.

Menu Bar Lighthouse drinks menu on a clipboard on the bar table, next to a cocktail, a beer and a lime
Menu Bar Lighthouse burger and sushi menu on a clipboard on the table, next to a beer, fries and the chopstick holder

On the clipboard, on the actual table: the collage reads the same surrounded by the drinks and food it's describing.

OTHER PROJECTS
01

Social Media Arts

Art Direction
02

Corello

Marketing Campaign
03

Saltu

Design Management

Let's create something worth remembering.

Available for selected freelance projects and full-time opportunities across Belgium and the EU.