Maison Dorée
A live-fire tasting menu restaurant running on a laminated PDF menu and a reservations line that went to voicemail after 6pm — service hours, when it actually mattered.
Client
Maison Dorée
Category
Restaurant
Timeline
14 Days
Services
Web Design, Art Direction
Maison Dorée had built a genuine following on an open-flame tasting menu and a cellar the sommelier had spent ten years assembling — and a website that showed neither. Reservations ran through a phone line that went to voicemail after 6pm, exactly when most guests were trying to book. The brief was direct: “make the site as considered as the menu.”
Three decisions that shaped the site.
Dark, not moody-for-the-sake-of-it
Fine-dining sites default to bright, white-tablecloth photography that could belong to any restaurant. We went the other way — a near-black charcoal base with a single warm ember accent, so every photo of the hearth and the candlelit room reads as the actual identity, not a stock filter over the top.
The menu as the site's spine
Instead of burying the eight-course tasting menu behind a PDF download, it became a numbered list running the length of the page — the same order the kitchen actually plates it in, with each course given room to breathe rather than crammed into a sidebar.
A cellar built over ten years, shown as a fact
The sommelier's cellar was the restaurant's best-kept secret — mentioned in reviews but invisible on the old site. We gave it its own section with hard numbers (1,200+ bottles, a decade building the list) instead of vague 'curated wine list' copy.
Brief to launch.
14 Days
Start to launch
Days 1–2
Discovery
Shot list review with the chef and sommelier; landed on live-fire cooking and the ten-year cellar as the two things no competitor could copy.
Days 3–5
Design System
Built the charcoal-and-ember palette and paired an italic serif display face with a plain sans body — deliberately warmer than the stark black-and-white look most tasting-menu sites lean on.
Days 6–11
Build
Built the hero, the eight-course menu grid, the room gallery and the cellar section, then wired the reservation request form to replace the after-hours voicemail.
Days 12–14
Review & Launch
One round of copy revisions with the chef, menu pricing double-checked against the actual card, launched ahead of a weekend service.
What the site actually did.
Launched ahead of a weekend service, with the reservation form replacing the after-hours voicemail.
Of reservation requests now made online
Increase in weeknight bookings
Average time on the menu section
Missed reservation calls after launch