#dominqueansel

A few years ago, the hottest thing in the food world was hybrid pastries.  You were getting anything from cruffins (croissant and muffin) to doughsant (doughnut and croissant) but the original (and trademarked) was the cronut (croissant and doughnut).  That originated from the Dominique Ansel bakery in New York.  Since then, Dominique Ansel has been slowly expanding his global bakery empire and opened places all over the World, including London.  That brought the cronut to London but that wasn’t enough and so Ansel opened his first bistro in London called Treehouse.  The other day, we went to give it a go.

Now, seeing as Dominique if a baker, we had to get the bread basket.  For £3, you get a lot of bread!  There was sourdough, brioche and foccacia all with butter and olives.  The bread was good with I think the brioche being my favourite but the bread didn’t quite stand out like some of the Dominique desserts do.

After the bread, it was the burrata.  This came with super thin slices of radish and some sourdough crostini.  The burrata was amazingly creamy, the sourdough crostini was paper thin and super crispy and the radishes were a nice touch.

Next up was a poached hens egg with artichokes and cress.  This was really pretty average.  The egg was nice and runny but ultimately, it was a poached egg with some salad.  Not particularly impressive.

This was the chicken liver mousse mille feuille.  This looked amazing with the mousse piped ont the pastry to seem like cream.  It was also really pretty big!  There was a lot of mousse on that plate.  It was super rich and full of flavour.  Luckily you had the pastry there otherwise it would probably have been a bit too much.  It was still a pretty hefty dish but really tasty!

Finally, we had the venison pithivier which turned out to be a pie.  The crust was really well made (what else would you expect from a former best pastry chef in the World?) and the filling was really strong in flavour.  If you’re not a fan of venison, this is not the dish for you.  The flavour was super rich and deep and jsut meaty.  I really liked it but it’s not for everyone.

For dessert, I had a chocolate mousse cake from the counter rather than go fo the menu.  This was delicious!  The mousse wasn’t too sweet and there was a really moist sponge centre that I really liked too. 

Treehouse is a great little spot for an afternoon dessert near Covent Garden.  The desserts are amazing and while it’s a shame that they don’t have cronuts, you can still get some of the classics like the DKA.  Definitely worth a visit but for me, stick to the sweet as the savoury was much less memorable.

Dominique Ansel Treehouse, 24 Floral Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 9DP