Rosa 2 Lite Theme Review

General Design

I'm very impressed with the luxury of this free WordPress restaurant theme. The stylish typography, full-width layout, as well as large and extensive parallax sections are the primary contributory elements of its beauty.

Other elements

The blue charcoal color is always a good choice for fonts on the white background, but it's a gorgeous color, more than a normal black, as it makes the design so classy and elegant. In the meanwhile,  the muddy-brown color of some highlight elements embellishes this luxurious appearance. This combination is really wise and excellent.

Yesteryear is a beautiful typeface. It's used for some highlight heading and makes the whole design so artistic and exquisite. Montserrat and Source Sans Pro are readable and also good choices from the author.

Rose 2 Lite has a really attractive hero image. It's full-screen, parallaxed and so overwhelming. The elements on it are arranged reasonably so they look so neat. But the menu lies directly on the image so you should choose the image carefully to allow people to view the menu clearly.

The first screen area with the menu bar on the slider

I don't have any complaints about the homepage sections. They're clearly arranged, embellished with full-screen parallax section, and really spacious, making me feel so "free" and "open". Especially, it's so meticulous of the author to use the small pattern and line to decorate the theme like this.

The decoration

They not only fulfill the blank space but also make this free WordPress restaurant theme looks really delicate.

On the archive page, the layouts are divided into two separate blocks for featured images (larger blocks) and excerpt blocks, which highlight the beautiful yummy dishes, yet still, make it so balanced and easy for people to view the images and the information at the same time. The space between the blocks is large so I find this page extremely "open" and airy. This list structure and style is the only type that Rose 2 Lite has. But I see that it's already so gorgeous, no need to change.

The archive page

The single post page is also very spacious and straightforward without sidebar and footer widget. I think that the author minimizes these elements to seize people's attention to the post content. But if you think that this page is too simple, just take a look at this super prominent heading with this beautiful decorative pattern. It will blow your mind when first viewing this page.

The single post page

Responsive

The design is responsive, which means that this theme display reasonably and beautifully in all devices. Especially, the slider is stunning and full-screen on any viewport.

The responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is

It's just as simple as other free themes you find on WordPress.org to install this theme. However, you must install the Pixelgrade Assistant plugin to get Pixelgrade Dashboard, then connect to Pixelgrade to access Starter Content and Manage Plugin. These steps are required to have the necessary tools to make your website look like the demo. That sounds complicated, but actually, it's just a free and simple registration to have premium support.

After you connect to Pixelgrade, you have two choices to move one: import the demo content or set up it in the traditional way.

After you connect to Pixelgrade

Once connecting, you can start to import the demo with one click and wait just one minute or less. But don't forget to install the three required plugins before that. I tried importing demo without them and just have the content while media isn't included.

If you don't want to mess up your old data with the demo data, just switch to manual set up.  Different from most of the other themes I've reviewed, you have to use the Nova Block plugin to build your homepage section in the Gutenberg Post Editor. It's not difficult, but you have to use both Nova Block and Customizer to make a similar page like the demo.

Using the Nova Blocks plugin to design the homepage

Generally, you have to read the documentation and don't ignore any steps. Though it's not difficult, it's slightly complicated to set up this Rosa 2 Lite WordPress theme.

Thanks to Nova Blocks, you can create and edit all the necessary sections for a restaurant website like Custom Menu and Dishes, Reservation, ... That's the key feature of this free WordPress theme.

However, I can't find any widget area like sidebar and footer for this theme.

When you install all the required plugin, there are new options in Customizer. However, the list of customization tools in Customizer is limited. Most of the actions to redesign the layout and style lie in the Gutenberg editor with Nova Block.

The Customizer before installing the required plugins

The Customizer after installing the required plugins

Thus, you can only change the total color palette and menu in Customizer.

Customizing color

However, the color is quite limited to a few palettes. Thus, it's impossible to choose any color you want.

Besides the standard Gutenberg blocks, there are 5 special blocks for a food website compatible with the Nova Block plugin. They are used to build all the elements on the homepage, but you can also add them to any inner page and they still look just as nice as they are on the front page. These blocks are easy to use, even include sample content so that you can edit and replace them by your own content.

For example, I add a menu from Nova Blocks. Here is the sample content they made for users.

Menu Block from Nova Block

Note: Because this theme strongly support Gutenberg, you can also use other common Gutenberg blocks to build your custom menu.

Then, I replace them with my own and this is how they display on the front end. It displays full-screen, so prominent!

Edit the Menu Block from Nova Block

As for other normal Gurtenberg blocks, I'm impressed with the full-width layout, which lets you show your media full-screen like this.

Full-screen video from normal video block of Gutenberg Editor

But if you think it's too large and can lower the video or image's quality, the wide width layout is more reasonable.

Wide-width video from normal video block of Gutenberg Editor

If you use this WordPress restaurant themes on computers, the speed is excellent. However, the performance of Rosa 2 Lite on mobile devices hasn't been optimized yet.

Website speed on computer checked by PageSpeed Insights

Website speed on mobile device checked by PageSpeed Insights

As for SEO, it needs more work to be totally optimized. I verified it with some special tools.

The documentation is understandable and detailed. Especially, the frontpage design sections with Nova Block are written carefully. However, it doesn't contain the section for using Customizer.

Even a free user can receive dedicated support via the free support ticket from the author after you connect Pixelgrade. It's so convenient as you can open a ticket from your Admin Dashboard.