A Note On This Site

The brief

Sodafish opened in Lakes Entrance to celebrate the produce of the surrounding water and farmland. Executive Chef Nick Mahlook and Design Director Emma Mahlook wanted a website that felt the way the room feels — unhurried, considered, and rooted in place. Off-the-shelf restaurant platforms didn’t fit. The menu changes weekly with the catch. The events shift with the season. The photography is its own argument for the food.

What was needed was something custom: easy enough for Emma to update from her phone between services, generous enough to do justice to a year of Nicky Cawood’s photography, and quiet enough to stay out of the kitchen’s way.

The build

The site was designed and built by Clever Ops, a studio that builds custom web and automation tools for owner-led businesses. The front end is a static-first Next.js application, served from the edge so pages open instantly on a phone in the car park. Behind it sits a purpose-built admin dashboard where Emma edits the menu, adds events, and uploads photography directly — no tickets, no developer in the loop.

Reservations route through OpenTable. Gift vouchers are processed by Square. The map on the contact page is rendered with Mapbox so the harbour reads the way it actually looks from the water. None of these systems should be visible to a guest making a booking; the work was in making them invisible.

The photography

Most of what you see — the plated dishes, the shared table, the boats at the marina — comes from a multi-year shoot with photographer Nicky Cawood, art directed by Emma Mahlook. Over a thousand images were catalogued and tied to the dishes and stories they belong to, so the site can keep finding new ways to show the restaurant without ever feeling stale.