The world’s 10 best restaurants. Do they also have outstanding websites?
The world’s 10 best restaurants. Do they also have outstanding websites?
These are the top 10 restaurants of the world according to the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list:
1 Noma, Denmark
2 El Celler De Can Roca, Spain
3 Mugaritz, Spain
4 Osteria Francescana, Italy
5 The Fat Duck, England
6 Alinea, United States
7 D.O.M, Brazil
8 Arzak, Spain
9 Le Chateaubriand, France
10 Per Se, United States
They serve the best fine dining food you can imagine. But what about their websites? Are they spot on? Is a visit to these sites the first step in their world of high standards and good quality?
Time to take a look! We judged the sites through a quick and spontaneous visit. Just like guests would do. “What about this restaurant and the food they serve? Would I go there? Can I make a reservation?” Of course, we are designers , so we also looked at creativity, presentation, design, usability, typography, colors, etc.
So here we go! This is our top 10 list:
1 D.O.M, Brazil
We like this! A winner. It’s a fresh, surprising creative website. We love the big pictures. Short text, which is fine on the web. Delicious techniques. A yummy site! One minor point, the entrance page is a bit dull.
2 The Fat Duck, England
It’s fast, it’s clean. This is good. Clear navigation. Excellent illustrations. Fine details. There is a lot going on at this site, but you always know where you are. This site has certainly character.
3 El Celler De Can Roca, Spain
Funny starter with a picture. We like to dive in. The navigation is different, but not OK It looks like a technical device. There‘s much hidden content with beautiful pictures and not too much text. The horizontal approach is creative. The typography is clumsy and not refined.
4 Mugaritz, Spain
A good home page. Big pictures. Obvious navigation. Social media, it’s all there. This is a big site. A bit chunky perhaps. With a lot of movement. Too much movement? We were a bit shaky after our visit. Overall it is a pleasant site with interesting touches.
5 Noma, Denmark
We are entering the website of the world’s best restaurant. It starts with a nice picture. We like the minimalist approach. Sadly it is all about text, text, text and again text. There is definitely a lack of visuality, but it’s a good working site. What about their top notch creativity in fine dining? Please show us. Creativity should start right here on their website!
6 Per Se, United States
A good working site. It’s neat. Everything is working, but not very inspiring. Their history ends in 2005. What is next?
7 Alinea, United States
No warm loving home page here. A very small grey screen with ugly navigation. The pictures in the galleries are OK, but everything is very dark and small. There’s no real character here.
8 Le Chateaubriand, France
A classic and old-fashioned website. We really hunger for imaginative styling here.
9 Osteria Francescana, Italy
The home page is ugly! It does not represent the look of the rest of the site and it took ages and ages to load. Is it about slow food? If it was for real, we would already have left. It is a minimalist website, compact and a lot of white space. Fine, but nothing special.
10 Arzak, Spain
No, this is absolutely not right! Is it a website from ancient history? Is this the website from one of the best restaurants in the world? What a shame! Come on, the first thing you need to do, is go out and hire one of the best web designers in the world to create your website!
Faam is an advertising and design agency in the Netherlands. In our blog ‘Faamrumoer’ we write about things we like and don’t like. Mostly in Dutch.
20 april 2011 BY FAAM
FAAM RECLAME ROYALE | FLORALAAN 19 | 7321 BA APELDOORN | NETHERLANDS | +31 (0)55 5786178 | INFO@FAAM.NU | @FAAMRUMOER
Congratulations for the winner: D.O.M.!
This puts a smile on our face, let’s enter the site...
The Fat Duck has character!
Noma, the best restaurant in the world, please show it to us. Too much text!
This is a very tasteless starter, Alinea!
Time stood still...