Au Jus is a Chicago-style

Au Jus is a Chicago-style Italian beef counter in Parma, Ohio. Italian beef came out of Depression-era Chicago in the 1930s, so I built the site around that period rather than a modern restaurant template — Art Deco framing, high-contrast serif display type, gold rules on deep maroon, and letterspaced small caps for the labels. The look isn't decoration; it's the sandwich's origin story, which is also the client's whole pitch.

Hand-coded from scratch — no framework, no page builder, no template. Just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which for a restaurant is the right call: it loads fast on a phone in a parking lot, nothing breaks when a dependency updates, and hosting costs almost nothing. Food photography runs full-bleed behind the frames, with the address, call-ahead policy, and hours surfaced in the hero so nobody has to hunt for them.

Beyond the homepage: full menu, a separate catering menu, photo and video galleries, contact, and a custom 404. I handled the local SEO as well — structured data, sitemap, robots, and Search Console — because a neighborhood restaurant lives or dies on showing up when someone searches "Italian beef near me." I also designed the 1920×1080 menu boards running on the TVs in the shop.