Trending: Illustrated Restaurant Menus

Is the venerated printed menu back in fashion? As QR codes, those pixelated pawns of the pandemic age, lose favor among the dining-out set, restaurants are again embracing the sense of grandeur and whimsy a well-designed menu delivers. At Soothr, a noodle bar in Manhattan’s East Village, the founders tapped artist Chonticha Meenin to illustrate the vibrant Thai–focused drink list inspired by Gal Nopparat (nine gems), said to deliver good fortune. The newly debuted Alba Accanto, Cucina Alba’s crudi bar offshoot, imbued its aperitivo–style menu with Florence–bred talent Isabella Cotier’s sketches. Tablescapes of bright fruit-garnished drinks, a plate of fresh sea bass, a fashionable couple lingering at a seaside two-top on a sunny day—the frequent Vogue contributor’s evocative vignettes transport guests to the dreamy Amalfi Coast.

Since opening in 2020, American Bar has served as a hive for society’s upper echelon looking for a little uptown panache in the West Village. Artist, designer, and FT Weekend columnist Luke Edward Hall captures the essence of the clubby dining room with his motifs of well-coifed patrons. When French co-owners Thibaut Castet and Theliau Probst were envisioning Maison Close, Paris’s famed menu artistry was at the top of the list. So the duo turned to Victoria Tentler-Krylov, a trained architect cum children’s author with two New Yorker covers to her name. Her watercolor scenes depicting the city’s inimitable characters—the fashionable It girl, frenzied waiters, ladies who lunch—are the definition of joie de vivre.

In Miami, the Michelin-starred Los Félix tasked indie studio Réplica with dreaming up a visual identity that reflects the Mesoamerican traditions inherent in its cuisine. The result is a rich amalgam of blocky fonts, geometric graphics, and a hyper-realistic drawing of maize stocks. For its Recipes for our Friends cocktail menu inspired by the French poet, filmmaker, and bon vivant Jean Cocteau, LPM commissioned one of its restaurant managers in Dubai, Lwin Maung Wai, to help reimagine the culinary booklet Cocteau penned and illustrated with Parisian chef Raymond Oliver in 1964. Each of the 12 recipes pays homage to a chapter in Cocteau’s life.

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