Dominique Ansel’s Treehouse Restaurant in Covent Garden Is Committing to the Bit

Dominique Ansel might use trompe-l’œil for pastry, but his new restaurant design is more Photoshop

Chef and pastry specialist Dominique Ansel’s new Covent Garden restaurant, Dominique Ansel Treehouse, has revealed its treehouse element to the world, along with its menu. It’s not Ansel’s first restaurant — he owns 189 in Los Angeles, which is one restaurant called 189, not one-hundred and eighty-nine restaurants — but it is his first in Europe. The menu focusses on pastry and dough — tapping into the pithivier renaissance, the vol-au-vent nostalgia, and the fact that things en croûte tend to taste pretty good — but the restaurant space is most notable for its attempts to emulate a treehouse. There’s a trunk running up through the centre, and sunken plaid-ish booths, and ... Decals of sunlight streaming through trees. This self-consciously staged immersion is not unheard of — both Circolo Popolare in Fitzrovia and, more recently, Pizza Pilgrims Victoria have had a go at it, and cafes built for Instagram love it — but coming from a chef who has made his name on at times dazzling trompe-l’œil illusions, such a design is something of a surprise.

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