Demínka.

Demínka has been open in the Vinohrady district of Prague since 1886, and its guests sit in an Art Nouveau interior. The website has to do two things at once.

It has to do justice to that long history while also working as a practical tool, because most people open it on their phone shortly before lunch wanting to know one thing: what’s cooking today.

We split the menus into four separate parts: lunch, à la carte, drinks and wine. Each changes at a different pace, and the lunch menu is rewritten every week.

The history has its own page with a gallery, so it never gets in the way of someone who has only come for the menu. Bookings are still taken by phone, because that’s how the restaurant likes to work. The site is in Czech and English for guests coming from the city centre.

The deep green comes from the neon over the entrance and the colour of the facade. Cream lettering and a gold logo sit on top of it, so the site looks like an extension of the corner building itself.

Headings are set in an Art Nouveau typeface that nods to the interior and to the era when the restaurant opened. The photos are rich and shot close to the food: roast meat, dumplings, cabbage and a cold, misted glass of beer. People come here for honest Czech cooking and a pint, and that’s what they need to see first.

The opening photo has two buttons on it, Reservations and Lunch menu. Those are the two reasons people open the site, so nobody has to scroll to reach them. Every menu has its own link in the top bar, and nothing is hidden in a dropdown.

The Reservations button leads to the contact page and its phone number rather than to an online booking system. The menus are plain text with no files to download, so the lunch menu can be read on a phone without pinching to zoom.