Tempting the gastronome, one menu at a time

It’s not unusual to come away from a restaurant thinking about the outstanding food or exceptional service. But, how often have your post-dinner musings included a memorable menu card? With newer restaurants struggling to create a unique culinary experience for its diners in a city where they’re already spoilt for choice, a well-designed menu card has become a crucial element in asserting an establishment’s individuality.

Italian restaurant Casa Mia’s interiors display a warm, sunny colour palate, meant to convey the visual imagery of a European countryside — a noteworthy attempt, given that the restaurant is located in a shopping mall in the heart of Ghatkopar, with a  demographic whose professed love for pav bhaji no pesto sauce can put a dent on. General manager Gianfrancesco Perrone offers in a compensatory tone, “Not all restaurants can be in Bandra catering to clients with developed tastes. Italian cuisine is quite famous in India, but there is still a lot of ignorance regarding dishes. We wanted to communicate as much as we could in the menu card itself.”

Casa Mia’s menu card, with its bold earthy colours and robust fonts, scores high on interactivity. The menu’s headers are all in Italian, translated into English for the uninitiated. Each dish has been described in detail, and the sauces come with recommended pasta to go along with it, all conveyed through playful symbols.

There is also a Did You Know column which toes the didactic line, illuminating diners about Italian ingredients and cooking styles. 

The décor of U Turn, a six-year-old grungy lounge bar in Khar touts a debatable horse stable theme certainly lost on the hip 20-somethings who populate this place, displaying a more wholesome appetite for panic-inducing loud music than the food. As a solution, owner Jimmy Chadha decided to launch a fine dining restaurant centred on the same theme but with a more formal air to turn the focus to the food.

And, the menu card was integral to the minutely planned design of the year old Derby Café. Reflecting the black and white theme of its plush interiors, the menu card features a noir-ish equestrian visual occupying the bottom of each glossy page.

Chadha was closely involved in the creation of menu cards for both his restaurants. “We even test run the menu in the restaurant to ensure that the font was legible in the restaurant’s lighting,” he says.

The trendy Bandra-based Salt Water Café’s minimalist décor is reflected in its dark brown Kraft paper menu cum placemat, in tune with the restaurant’s all-day café format. The sparse single colour menu features doodles to add an element of playfulness to its simplicity, with a real life story hidden behind each sketch.

Designer Preeti Gokarni explains, “A biking race with the chef of Salt Water Café inspired the little bicycle element on the menu, while sitting on the terrace of the café over a meal inspired the moon and the stars.”

Incidentally, illustrations, carrying an implicit suggestion of their custom-made uniqueness, are becoming popular among restaurateurs who wish to render a distinctive look to their menu cards.

Chef Manu at Olive Bar & Kitchen, Mahalaxmi says, “Yes, I was very particular about the visuals in my menu. They are lovely hand illustrations done exclusively for us by a couple of artists. It also gains an air of exclusivity when you have artists create works specially for your menus, like in some top notch places in the West.”