steam
content, menus, and creative production for a family-owned shanghainese restaurant in greenwich village.
context
steam is a family-owned shanghainese restaurant in greenwich village known for handmade soup dumplings and dim sum. my work with them started small, vetting a few content creators as a one-off, and grew into owning most of their content and creative: menu copy and redesign, food photography, in-store posters, and guest emails. most of that happened between 2024 and 2025; these days i keep their resy listing up to date and help with the occasional email.
menus
the menu was steam's biggest content problem. front-of-house staff fielded the same questions every shift: what's in a "pork soup dumpling sampler"? which sauces come with what? odd line breaks made the old menu hard to scan, and staff had to explain house policies at every table.
so i started with the people answering those questions. each change maps to something staff told me:
- short descriptions under anything ambiguous (the sampler now lists exactly what's in it)
- every english item paired with its chinese name
- sauce and add-on options printed right where you order
- a policies section (card limits, gratuity, allergies) so staff don't have to repeat it
the new menus went live in june 2025. staff say the questions about what items are and how the menu is laid out have disappeared. customers still ask questions, just not about the menu itself.
i built the menus in figma. steam's menu changes often, so i wanted a system that makes updates fast: item, section, and allergen components, with a toggle for vertical or horizontal names (chinese and english don't always stack well). adding, cutting, or reordering dishes takes minutes instead of reflowing a whole page.
food photography
this was actually my first time doing a food photography shoot with a full set-up. i have a dedicated mirrorless camera that i take photos with as a hobby, but most of that was travel/street photography—so this was a huge learning experience for me. many thanks to my friend ryan, also a hobby photographer, without whom this shoot would not have been possible.
below are a selection of some of the photos from the shoot. there are others not pictured here that can be viewed on steam's resy profile. i prioritized hero shots but made sure to get a spread as well.
posters
i chose the xiao long bao and the black gold lava buns as the hero images to use for the restaurant's outdoor posters. most shops on 6th ave where steam is located tend to have signage displayed outside—steam, in particular, has an unassuming facade that they are unable to change due to the storefront being a designated landmark. as such, choosing the most eye-catching shots was essential.
i chose the solo soup dumpling shot since soup dumplings are, deservedly, super trendy right now and steam's signature (handmade to order!); the black gold lava bun shot was chosen for the stunning color. staff have reported an uptick in the latter specifically—previously, customers had no idea what "black gold lava buns" were but when given a visual aid, were interested enough to ask and try.
creator partnerships
this is actually where my work with steam began: i first vetted creators for them as a one-off in 2022, before my role grew. i sourced and liaised with creators whose aesthetic and audience felt like a natural fit. justin (hungryartistny) later came back on his own to feature steam again in a 2024 roundup. the work below is theirs, selected and shared here to show the full picture of what the brand looks like in the world.
reflections
if i were to re-approach this project from the beginning, i would've gone into the food photography shoot with clearer direction. i'm not unhappy with the shots i got at all, but i do think that in the moment i was perhaps too focused on just the photography and not what i would have to do with the photos after. the poster, for example: i'm not a huge fan of the rectangular container but i could not find a way to include the wordmark without it as the background washed out the text. in the future, i'd plan the composition with the type placement in mind from the start.
the menus taught me that a lot of content work is listening. the most useful research i did was asking the staff who hand out the menu every day what goes wrong; they already knew. it also taught me to pick the tool for the job in front of me: figma isn't built for print, but for a menu that changes this often, a component system beat a static layout.
lastly, i really loved working with content creators in order to boost our audience. as someone who gets a lot of their food recommendations online (often from the very creators i ended up speaking with), it was really fascinating seeing what the other side of the screen looked like. steam no longer partners with creators as often since they're in a very different stage of business right now, but it was also a lesson for me in learning how to target specific demographics and being intentional with who you work with:
- work with creators, but not too many that have similar audiences
- be careful not to overexpose yourself
- most importantly, be as authentic as possible