Okay, so today I’m gonna walk you through how I tackled creating a “Dim Sum Inc.” menu. It was a fun little project, and I learned a bunch, so let’s dive right in.
First off, I started by brainstorming. Like, what kind of dim sum dishes would this fictional restaurant even serve? I grabbed a pen and paper (yes, old school!) and just started jotting down everything that came to mind: classics like siu mai and har gow, but also some more creative, out-there options. Think fusion stuff, maybe even a dessert dim sum or two.
Next, I needed to organize all these ideas. I fired up Google Docs and created a basic table. Columns included things like “Dish Name,” “Description,” “Ingredients,” and “Price.” It was super rough at this stage, just getting the initial data in there.
Then came the fun part: research! I went online and looked up detailed descriptions and ingredient lists for all the classic dim sum dishes. I wanted to make sure I had accurate info for the menu descriptions. I also checked out menus from real dim sum restaurants to get a feel for pricing and how they describe their dishes. This part took a while because I also watched bunch of cooking videos which were very distracting.
Once I had a solid list of dishes and descriptions, I started to play around with the layout. I knew I wanted the menu to look clean and easy to read, but also a little bit fun and playful. I decided to use a simple font and a color scheme that was inspired by traditional Chinese porcelain. Think blues and whites, with maybe a pop of red for the restaurant’s logo.
I used Canva for the design. It’s pretty user-friendly, and I didn’t need anything super fancy. I experimented with different layouts, trying to find the right balance between text and images. I added some small, hand-drawn illustrations of dim sum dishes to give it a more authentic feel.
After the initial design was done, I printed out a few test versions. I wanted to see how it looked in real life and get a feel for the paper quality. I realized that the font I had chosen was a bit too small, so I bumped it up a size. I also tweaked the descriptions to make them more concise and appealing.
Pricing was tricky. I looked at menus from other restaurants in the area and tried to get a sense of what the market would bear. I also considered the cost of ingredients and labor. I ended up with a pricing structure that I thought was fair and competitive.
Finally, I added a few extra touches to the menu, like a short description of the restaurant’s philosophy and a section on how to order dim sum. I also included a disclaimer about potential allergens.
And that’s pretty much it! It was a fun little project, and I learned a lot about menu design and dim sum along the way. The final product looked pretty decent.
- Brainstormed dim sum dishes.
- Researched descriptions and pricing.
- Designed the menu in Canva.
- Tweaked the layout and descriptions.
- Finalized the pricing.
The whole process was about iteration and refinement. I just kept tweaking things until I was happy with the result.
