Last month I told you that former Green Door Gourmet chef Richard Jones had jumped into the tiny galley kitchen at The Treehouse and that he had a new menu in the works. I’m pleased to share that the menu is now live, and having sampled a bit of it, it’s quite promising! The Treehouse started offering lunch over the summer to add more options for pandemic dining, and Jones hasn’t gotten around to tinkering much with that menu yet, so there’s still more to look forward to.
I describe the kitchen as a "galley” because it really isn’t much bigger than the space on an airplane where your flight attendant used to heat up pre-packaged meals for distribution but now just hides out from maskholes. Creating anything memorable in that small space has been an ongoing challenge for all the chefs who have worked at The Treehouse, but one which they have all conquered admirably. With the extended service of lunch or brunch seven days a week, plus dinner service every day except Sunday, and a daily special happy hour menu from 3-6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, it’s a damned miracle.
Yet Jones and his staff are pulling it off, and he reports that it has been going swimmingly. Lunch revolves around salads, bowls and sandwiches with a very popular spicy steak sandwich on a baguette and a smoked bologna sandwich featuring meat from local smoke king Nathan Gifford that Jones promised won’t be rolling off the menu anytime soon. The happy hour is a hidden gem of a deal, with $5 beers and special $6 cocktails to accompany an inventive list of snacks in the $4-$8 range.
Even though I was there during lunch, Jones snuck me a plate of one of his favorite happy hour items, a dish he calls Tiger Tots. If anyone tells you that the tater tots at a restaurant are made in-house, you’re correct in at least raising an eyebrow, because the mechanics of shredding and reshaping a potato are pretty complex. Jones came up with an ingenious solution — he uses the middlins of cracked rice, something that used to be a by-product of the long grained rice industry, but which became a premium product when chefs like Sean Brock demonstrated that you can make the creamiest rice ever with these fractured grains. With consistency halfway between grits and risotto, I make middlins at home as a side starch frequently, but I would have never considered trying what Jones has accomplished.
Using the same setup as one would use to extrude sausage from a grinder, he creates a tube of crispy rice that he cuts into short discs, breads and fries, resulting in a crunchy exterior and creamy center. These are not the gummy arancini rice balls that were briefly ubiquitous on local menus. Served with homemade “yum yum sauce,” Tiger Tots are the best $6 app I’ve had in a long time and worth the trip for a late afternoon snack at the Treehouse.
The new dinner menu trades on Jones’ international experience as a chef, featuring Asian influences like a sesame-chicken katsu patty served with hoisin ketchup and what he calls “pretty pickles." Jones uses a kimchi base for the twice-cooked potatoes that accompany the wagyu picanha beef dish. That wagyu comes from Australia, Jones’ home country, and you’ll see hints of his heritage in other parts of the menu.
Even as international as the menu is, Jones still grounds it in lots of local ingredients, taking advantage of seconds produce from local farms to keep costs down while giving some of those less supermarket-worthy veggies a second chance. Aiming to add more vegetarian and vegan options to the menu, Jones has come up with seasonal dishes like an excellent baby kale salad that really lets these greens shine though, as opposed to the tabouli-consistency shreds that emerge from the Vitamixes in many other kitchens around town. Dressed with apple butter, winter radish and apples, it is a taste of the season.
A golden garbanzo patty is served with seared vegetable slaw and a salty peanut satay sauce. As I tasted through several dishes, I marveled at how the kitchen staff manages to prep and serve such a wide variety of flavors and textures, but Jones told me that through techniques like sous vide, fry and freeze and a lot of planning, he’s confident they can keep up with the demand, even after warmer weather means that The Treehouse’s outdoor patio will considerably increase the seating capacity.
Jones has jumped into the whole concept of a treehouse, reaching for childhood memories and flavors for inspiration, and dividing the menu into sections labeled seedlings, leaves, trunk and saplings. Swing by The Treehouse for a dining experience that’s casual and breezy, but which also showcases some impressive kitchen talent.
