Awesome Restaurant Menu Design Ideas to Learn From

Coming up with a restaurant concept and menu engineering takes a lot of effort and hard work. So make sure you present your ideas in the best possible way with creative restaurant menu design.

If you’ve enticed your customers with a beautiful logo design, and other aspects of good restaurant branding, it’s time to temp them to taste some of your food!

Whether you serve something as simple as hot dogs or as stylish as truffle risotto, your menu needs to be easy to read and reflect your target audience.

Here are 15 great menu design ideas to help you get started.

The power of photography in restaurant menu design

There are many reasons to use high-quality photos to spice up your menu design. Perhaps you run a hipster brunch place with many customers looking to order something both tasty and instagramable. Or you have a big family restaurant with lots of menu items. Help rowdy families and indecisive picky eaters choose the perfect meal by including appetizing photos of your offer.

1. The Sandwich Gallery

Images of food tend to make us hungry (remember the old saying “eyes bigger than the stomach”). However, making certain food look appetizing and beautiful is quite a skill. The Sandwich Gallery is a brunch place that serves all the classics like avocado toast, eggs and even burgers for those much-needed hungover meals.

This menu design is exceptional as it takes the diner on a trip around the world with each sandwich-type of food representing one city in the world. The photos are paired with subtle illustrations and all the key information is included, like food cost, ingredients and calories.

2. Zaliv

Appetizers, entrees and desserts are all found on separate pages, and subcategorized as cold and hot starters, BBQ and fish dishes. Despite the abundance of food, the menu design still doesn't look cluttered—a stylish blue background makes this menu look like some sort of food magazine. 

This menu design example makes very clever use of photography. Instead of shots of single items, all the plates are laid out together, as if they were presented on a stylish dining table.

3. Soya

The point of photos in menu design is usually to show your guests what they can expect on their plates. But photos are a powerful tool, especially if you are a restaurateur specializing in a specific, exotic cuisine. They can educate customers about the cultural tradition or the cooking process itself.

This appetizers page concept for an Asian fusion restaurant uses “behind the scenes” photos, instead of the common sushi plates or rice bowls.

4. Bagel Shop

Here’s another simple and effective restaurant menu design idea. Instead of using images of sandwiches, you can keep things clean with high-quality shots of ingredients. This is usually something you can even find online, so it’s also a great choice for food trucks strapped for cash.

Additionally, for those looking to offer flexible dining options beyond traditional restaurants, incorporating delivery or takeout menus of the highest rated meal kits can add a modern and convenient twist to your offerings. This simple menu design can be a perfect option for takeout or delivery services.

Gorgeous illustrated restaurant menus

Modern isometric illustrations or retro watercolors, there are tons of creative ways in which restaurateurs use illustrations to spice up their menu design. Illustrations will give your menu a custom look and set it apart from boring menu templates you can find with a simple Google search.

5. Iluzjon Cafe Bar

This cute and quirky restaurant menu is a perfect fit for this Warsaw cafe. They serve gorgeously instagrammable food and drinks, like veggie burgers, ice cream, salads, gluten free pasta, and breakfast foods.

The simple menu design with lots of white space is a perfect fit for their young target audience.

6. Al Dente

We’re all used to Italian restaurant menus being an endless stream of red, white and green, with the usual images of olive oil and parmesan getting sprinkled over rich pasta plates.

So this creative menu design truly offers a breath of fresh air. After all, Italian food is fairly simple and these colorful, cute illustrations fit the casual fun nature of this particular cuisine. Al Dente’s logo design is simple, yet perfectly fitting: the letter “N” looks like cooked spaghetti.

7. El Carinito

Mexican food restaurants are well known for their widely popular delicacies like tacos, burritos and nachos, but also for their colorful design celebrating the rich cultural heritage of this country.

El Carinito is no exception. The front of the menu almost looks like a book cover with a modern floral design that’s simply stunning. And the inside is decorated with custom illustrations of traditional ingredients like corn, avocados and chilli peppers. 

8. Beer and Wine Steakhouse

Here’s a great restaurant menu design idea on using illustrations sparsely. Small illustrations as details in a simple, crisp menu layout can be all you need to create an elegant and beautiful menu.

9. Cibo

If you’re designing a menu with illustrations on the cover, this restaurant menu card is a great source of inspiration. Line illustration style is always a great choice as it’s easy to incorporate into any design. Opt for a simple color palette and a neutral background to achieve a timeless look.

Stylish menus for a fine dining experience

If you take your place in the restaurant industry very seriously and want to attract a clientele with more refined tastes, there are a few menu design tips you should know. Often, the most stylish places have the simplest restaurant menu design: plain paper and a carefully selected typeface. 

Here are some very classy restaurant menu design ideas to inspire those with a taste for class.

10. Moshi Moshi

Japanese restaurants are known for their elegant, minimalistic style. Still, you should always add your own personal touch to timeless elements like a black, white and red color scheme or photos of elaborate sushi plates.

This is a sushi restaurant menu card design to learn from. Adding simple patterns to each page and the cover is an elegant detail that ties everything together. 

11. 1910

Another Mexican food restaurant on our list that gives the “conventional” look a run for the money. 1910 is a London restaurant that is named after the year that started the Mexican revolution.

The designers state that the aim of this branding project was to “create a Mexican identity without cliches”. Sure enough, they succeeded to do that with great success, relying on traditional imagery and richness of colors, but with a more modern, stylized approach.

12. The Brass Onion

This “modern American restaurant with a traditional country flare” has almost a French-country vibe to it. The Brass Onion got a vast food menu, from brunch favorites to bar snacks and family takeaway dinners.

Having so many menu items can mean a busy, inaccessible design that might leave your customers frustrated. This makes a great restaurant menu design idea for any place with a vast offer: you can see all the key information easily listed but the menu is given a nice touch with simple illustrations and a classy color scheme.

13. Liverpool House

We’ve given you plenty of restaurant menu design ideas for printed menus. But let’s face it - lots of people nowadays check the menu online before visiting a restaurant

So, creating a user-friendly appealing online menu is just as important. This can also be a great idea to save up on printing costs, and ask your customers to scan a QR code for the menu.

14. S.O.S Vegan

Vegan restaurants are rarely just about food preferences: veggies and vegans are often concerned with the origin of the products and the ethics of the food production process.

This restaurant menu idea is a great example of using common “vegan” elements like leaves and an earthy color palette and adding a personal touch. The menus are sleek, narrow rectangles with a clean design containing all the information on food cost and ingredients, while the back is more decorative with a unique pattern created out of the restaurant’s logo.

15. Osteria Mattone

Last entry on the list is an incredibly simple design that can teach you a lot about effective menu layout. Keep things organized into different sections for easy browsing. An elegant serif font like this and high-quality card can deliver that effortless and classy feel.

Need help designing a menu for a restaurant?

There’s no doubt about it: there are tons of great free templates from menus you can grab from Canva menu maker and similar platforms.

However, a template or sloppy DIY menu design will hardly match the overall vibe of your restaurant. As a result, you might put off potential customers and lose revenue.

Team up with our professional print design services and get all the graphics your restaurant needs for an affordable monthly rate. Whether it’s a new menu design, a fresh website, logo, flyers, or anything in between - we’ve got you.

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Danica Popovic

From real-life menus to creative concepts and restaurant menu design templates - we’ve compiled some of the best restaurant menu ideas out there!