Brand Launches · Restaurant identity
A 40-seat restaurant named, its menu and identity built
A 40-seat Oaxacan restaurant in a 1920s hardware store: a menu people photograph, a mother’s story told like a love letter.
The brief, verbatim
I'm opening a 40-seat Oaxacan restaurant in a converted 1920s hardware store — original tin ceiling, brick walls, my mother's recipes going back three generations in Oaxaca. I want the identity and the menu to be the most beautiful thing this town has ever eaten from: a menu people photograph before the mezcal arrives and steal on the way out, her story told on one page like a love letter, the mark on the door burned like a cattle brand. The name isn't settled — working name is Casa Milpa; beat it or convince me. Opening night, 120 invitations go out carrying whatever you make, and the food press in this state gets one first impression of my mother's life's work. Make them gasp, then make them hungry.
What the room did
The working name beaten: YA CANTÓ. A real Oaxacan service menu, seven moles by name and mezcal by agave; Herminia’s love letter in her own voice; the opening-night invitation for the 120; and the identity system sheet behind them.
The deliverable
Build your own
You have a restaurant to open. Brief the studio in plain English and watch a room of specialists build it.
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