Lutong bahay, ordered direct
the challenge
A kitchen like Bikong mostly exists online on the delivery apps' terms: every order through Uber Eats, SkipTheDishes, or DoorDash pays a commission, and the listing that takes that order looks like every other listing in London. Nothing in an app card says husband-and-wife cooking from scratch since 2018, or best food at the 2024 London International Food & Drink Festival. Party trays — the biggest tickets a small kitchen sells — don't fit an app cart at all; they get arranged over Facebook messages. Bikong needed one page it owns that handles the four things a hungry visitor actually does: order, call, book a tray, find the door.
the build
The core of the build is the order flow. Every "Order now" button on bikong.ca opens a chooser — "Where would you like to order?" — that lists Bikong's own Square store first, marked as the best price with no app fees, and Uber Eats, SkipTheDishes, and DoorDash behind it. The section heading says the position out loud: "Order direct, or wherever you already are." On the shipped page the direct Square link appears eight times; each delivery app appears three. The apps aren't hidden — they're demoted to the fallback.
The menu is content, not a PDF. The dishes section — "The plates people keep coming back for" — is a scrolling rail of plates from chicken inasal and pork barbecue to sinigang na hipon, sisig, pancit canton, pancit bihon, and grilled tilapia, each rendered from a typed data record the way every Linova site is built. Changing a dish is a data edit that rebuilds the static page, not a re-exported menu file. Party trays got a section shaped like the offer itself: two platters, one flat price of $99, contents listed, and a Messenger link to book — because that is where those conversations already happen.
The story earns its own section instead of living in review threads. "Two cooks, one province, a lot of garlic" introduces Vic and Gwen Gianan, cooking family recipes out of the Falcon Street kitchen since 2018, with the 2024 wins at the London International Food & Drink Festival and London Rib Fest stated plainly. The visit block closes the loop for people deciding from their phone: the 109 Falcon St. address, hours with the Wednesday closure, tap-to-call phone links, an email link, and a straight Google Maps link rather than an embedded map.
The page itself is Linova's standard system doing what it is for: Astro rendering typed data modules to static HTML, deployed on Vercel, with hand-written CSS and Fraunces and Barlow loaded from Google Fonts. No client-side framework — the order chooser is the interactive piece, and it's a small script, not an app. A restaurant page gets opened on a phone, on cell data, by someone hungry right now; static output is how it shows up fast.
what shipped
- Direct-first order chooser
- Every order button opens "Where would you like to order?" with Bikong's Square store first — labeled best price, no app fees — ahead of Uber Eats, SkipTheDishes, and DoorDash.
- Menu as typed data
- The dishes rail renders from structured records, chicken inasal through pancit bihon, so a menu change is a data edit and a rebuild, not a new PDF.
- Party tray booking path
- Two $99 platters with their contents listed and a Messenger link to book, matching where tray orders were already being arranged.
- Story and awards section
- Vic and Gwen Gianan, family recipes since 2018, and the 2024 London International Food & Drink Festival and Rib Fest wins, stated on the page instead of buried in reviews.
- Visit block built for phones
- Falcon Street address, hours with the Wednesday closure, tap-to-call and email links, and a direct Google Maps link.
stack
Astro, static outputTypeScript data moduleshand-written CSSSquare online store for direct ordersVercelwant one like it
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