Visit The Slanted Door web site at http://www.slanteddoor.com.

Working with the folks at The Slanted Door has been a unique and gratifying challenge. This restaurant has been an unparalleled success story – and an American story as well. Charles Phan, the Executive Chef, and his family were part of the boat people exodus from Vietnam at the very end of the war. Years later, in 1996, Charles and the Phans started serving Vietnamese food in San Francisco’s artsy Mission district in a space he renovated with credit cards. The food was remarkable.

Today, The Slanted Door is the cornerstone establishment in the newly restored San Francisco Ferry Plaza on the bay – and it takes about six weeks to get a reservation for dinner! This year Charles won the prestigious James Beard Award for BEST CHEF: CALIFORNIA, which goes far in fulfilling Charles’s mission of bringing respect to the truly amazing cooking that originates from Asia.

The  ingredients for success in establishing a restaurant from scratch are mysterious – but anyone who has worked with Charles knows he often does things in an enigmatic and mysterious way. Web sites can be complex, somewhat in their execution, but even more so in the responsibility the web developer has in capturing the essence of a business or a personality. With Charles we had to find our way with a client that defies definition.

In the ideal world it’s nice when a color palette, fonts, logos and brand usage guidelines exist – though that’s not always the real world, and certainly not in the case of The Slanted Door.

The Slanted Door site did not need to function as a tool to attract patrons – and Charles is not into marketing fluff of any type. He also did not want any easy clichéd themes like chopsticks or Asian lettering. So, taking all these variables into the mix, we developed a streamlined, soothing site that would dish up information easily and quickly.

There is quite a bit of depth to the Slanted Door web site, though it may seem remarkably simple – which was the goal. There are six detailed menus and places to download images and logos for the press. There is also a password-protected area where staff view their schedule.

The Slanted Door site is driven by our Content Management System (CMS). This means everything has been templatized and content changes are extremely easy to make. Many updates are made regularly by Slanted Door personnel.

For The Slanted Door we built a custom module within our CMS –  Menu Publisher™.  The restaurant has eight detailed menus – lunch, dinner, wine, etc., and many of them change daily. If the fish is not perfect upon delivery, it’s off the menu. Each day new menus need to be printed, and also published to their web site. We created a custom module with an easy to use front end that allows them to make their changes one time, press a button and have the new menus both print and publish to their web site.

The site is now a few years old and we are about to make some changes. Aspects of design will be tweaked. We are discussing the addition of an image gallery and also adding access to an online reservation system. Charles plans to begin selling ‘cooking kits’ at the Ferry Plaza, so we'll also be adding an e-commerce area.

We are proud to have played a role in the success of this amazing restaurant – and look forward to many meals together at The Slanted Door.