L'Antidote

A French chef, years of experience in other people's kitchens, finally opening his own restaurant. L'Antidote in Dole, France — a warm, modern brasserie with a clear vision of how it should feel, and nothing yet to show it.

Jose came in from scratch. No website, no brand system, no visual presence. He'd taken over an existing space from a previous owner and wanted to make it entirely his own. What he needed was a complete identity built from the ground up — brand, typography, colour, graphic design, and a website that would do the work of drawing people through the door before they'd even eaten there.

We worked alongside Facade Media, who handled the social media and online marketing presence. Our scope was the brand and web build.

A new restaurant with no digital presence is invisible. Dole is not a major city — the audience is local, the competition is real, and the window for first impressions is narrow. Jose needed people to feel the restaurant before they arrived. The warmth, the welcome, the quality — all of it had to come through on a screen.

He had a vision. He just didn't have a system.

The brief was warmth. Jose wanted gold and slate — earthy, grounded — with a splash of red. The job was to honour that instinct and build a system around it rather than redirect it.

The typography decision followed the same logic. A clean sans-serif would have been colder, more digital, more expected. L'Antidote needed something that felt like the food — considered, warm, rooted in tradition. New Times Romance was the choice.

The one constraint was the logo. Jose had one already and was attached to it. We adopted it, adjusted the colour, softened the treatment, and integrated it into the system so it felt considered rather than inherited.

A complete brand system and a full website build on the MM stack — Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, Vercel.

The site is bilingual — French and English. The structure is clean and hospitality-focused: homepage leading with photography and atmosphere, full menu page, about section, contact page. Booking integrated directly via Octotable — a single step from interest to reservation.

The restaurant is live, the site is receiving consistent daily traffic, and bookings come through the integrated system each week. Jose pays a monthly retainer for ongoing maintenance. The relationship has been quiet and consistent, which is exactly how a good client relationship should be.

The brand landed well. The site feels like the restaurant. That was the only brief that mattered.