ELA Greek Eats opened recently in Venice, California on Lincoln Boulevard near Rose Avenue. It is owned and run by the same owner, Carolos Tomazo, as the highly rated Greek
restaurant Inotheke, previously located at 606 Broadway in Santa Monica, which closed in February.
Their website at present is ‘bare bones’, I assume something temporary, as they have yet to construct something decent. The only information is menu and location. There are no images nor prices
on the menu. This is a great opportunity for a redesign project. I looked up their old website, Inotheke.com, via archive.org, the ‘Wayback Machine’, assuming that when they get around to constructing
their new website it would be something like the old one, so I am critiquing based also on what I saw on the old website at: https://web.archive.org/web/20181120103424/http://www.inotheke.com/
They need to convey the ambience and environment of the restaurant via images. I appreciated the simplicity of the menu and the descriptions, however the layout is poor as it requires endless scrolling
to view each item separately. Images of the food plates are drastically needed. I enjoyed seeing what the Happy Hour menu included. However it appeared in the miniscule navigation at the top of the
page. A Greek theme and logo needs to be created to emphasize the uniqueness of the food.
The goal of the website is to enhance customer awareness of the new location, to encourage increase of customer business. The target audience is the adult population which frequent
the area of Lincoln and Rose as well as beach-goers and tourists. A social media presence is sorely needed. Layout and theme should increase readability and ease the navigation.
Apparently, the owner was nominated for the prestigious James Beard Foundation restaurant award in 2011. This should be emphasized, perhaps in a separate ‘Review’ link.
The Rose Cafe is a well known restaurant nearby. I found the introductory beach scene video entertaining, as well as the videos of the staff preparing food for the oven. The top
splash images were good, however, that's where the enticement ended. The layout was inconsistent and atrocious, with navigation hard to follow. The menu shows endless change of items throughout the
day. Good to know, however it makes for a very cluttered and confusing menu with too many 'categories' and partitions and no prices nor images. The 'Bar' link showed only their appetizers, not what
was expected. A better font choice is needed.
The Dudley Market is located nearby at the Venice waterfront. The home page and subsequent layouts are simple and adequate, but there is no return link to the home page from
the other pages. The logo is poor and meaningless. The food menu is too simple with poor font choice which lacks any kind of emphasis - readability is poor.
The exceptional features were the press page and the staff page. They have really taken advantage of linking to the quite favorable articles in LA Magazine and Eater LA - they are featured
in the top 15 new restaurants to try in the Eater LA list of May and June. The staff page highlights all the bios of the various staff with their images. Also convenient was a blip on where
to park close by.
Malaka Brothers Spit Roasted Mediterranean restaurant is a well-known place on the Venice boardwalk. Their website is exceptional. The opening splash pages have great imagery and
individually have links to the different sub-page links. To emphasize their care and dedication to the culinary industry, they have a separate link to describe the ingredients they use, creating
communication of their environment. The layout of menu items with images, theme, logo, and font are very clear and enticing. The website leans toward online ordering and take-out. The contact page
insludes a map of the area.
However, the 'About' page link is visible only at the bottom. Also, the menu reading like a check-out cart ('add-to-cart' appears with every menu item), along with a picture of the place as a shack-like
to-go place implies that it is only take-out or online ordering. At the online ordering page, I did find 'Conveniently located on Venice Beach boardwalk for take out or dine in.', but no images of
indoor dining. Also, the order takeout page seems to have a different menu, which adds to viewer confusion. Page loading time was too long.