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EL PASTOR

Industry

Branding

Client

Live Industry Brief

Service

Illustration / Graphic Design

Date

October 2025

The Brief

Create illustrations and ideally consider the design and layout of a suite of menus for El Pastor Mexican tacos restaurants in central London.

The menus must capture the essence of Mexico and its food. It could be one illustration for four locations (Soho, Battersea, Kings Cross and Borough Market) or a different visual identity for each location.

Each site essentially has the same core menu but with some slight differences in dishes. There is also a separate drinks and cocktail menu.

What is El Pastor?

The El Pastor family is a small group of Mexican restaurants in London inspired by the decade the founders - Sam Hart & Crispin Somerville - spent living in Mexico City, running a cult nightclub, El Colmillo. El Pastor is named after the mighty Al Pastor taco; our food is committed to the flavours of Mexico.

Sustainability and provenance are of great importance to El Pastor. They make tortillas in-house daily using heritage Mexican corn sourced from Mexico by working with the initiative TAMOA that protects corn biodiversity. Sourcing ingredients with care for both farmers who grow and rear them, and the environment, feeds through everything we do.

What is El Pastor?

The El Pastor family is a small group of Mexican restaurants in London inspired by the decade the founders, Sam Hart & Crispin Somerville, spent living in Mexico City, running a cult nightclub, El Colmillo. El Pastor is named after the mighty Al Pastor taco; our food is committed to the flavours of Mexico.

Sustainability and provenance are of great importance to El Pastor. They make tortillas in house daily using heritage Mexican corn sourced from Mexico by working with the initiative TAMOA that protects corn biodiversity. Sourcing ingredients with care for both farmers who grow and rear them, and the environment, feeds through everything we do.

What is El Pastor?

The El Pastor family is a small group of Mexican restaurants in London inspired by the decade the founders, Sam Hart & Crispin Somerville, spent living in Mexico City, running a cult nightclub, El Colmillo. El Pastor is named after the mighty Al Pastor taco; our food is committed to the flavours of Mexico.

Sustainability and provenance are of great importance to El Pastor. They make tortillas in house daily using heritage Mexican corn sourced from Mexico, working with the TAMOA initiative that protects corn biodiversity. Sourcing ingredients with care for both the farmers who grow and rear them, and the environment informs everything we do.

Battersea Location

Idea

This project was heavily based on research, so I decided to do a deep dive into the rich history of Mexico and go to the roots of the Aztecs. This spoke to me, so I decided to look at the patterns they would have in fabrics, carvings, etc.. I took inspiration from the colours by using some of them as a base for my palette. Since El Pastor is a business, they want to have history as well as stay up to date with the branding of the 21st Century.

Execution

I used the location of each restaurant and turned it almost into an Aztec temple, and have that as the main focal point with my own interpretation of if Aztecs actually ran El Pastor and how they would look. Which is why I focused on and created different character designs for each Location. The layout was a collage effect of layering different illustrations on top of each other, ranging from the Restaurant, Aztecs, Birds, Drinks and Ingredients, all of the illustrations linked to El Pastor, the Aztecs or both.

Kings Cross Location

Soho Location

Borough Market Location

Drinks Menu

Extra Project

To support your ideas for the El Pastor menus, please create a label Illustration and design for El Pastor’s own mezcal. The Taco Party crew at El Pastor love mezcal, big time. Think of it as tequila’s naughty cousin. Typically drink at the end of a meal as a digestif, we tend to drink it through out our evenings. El Pastor mezcal is an artisanal variety made from 7 day roasted agave. Then smoked in mesquite and pine, naturally fermented in wooden vats and double distilled in copper stills.

Old Label Design

New Label Design

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