Post-Dispatch file photo
Tree House
When Tree House opened in 2013, Bay Tran’s restaurant along South Grand impressed me for two reasons. It was a vegetarian restaurant that knew how to cook vegetables properly — not, unfortunately, the standard — and it was a vegetarian restaurant that knew how to prepare meat substitutes so that non-vegetarians wouldn’t mind that they were substitutes. Above all, the food here was — and still — is creative and flavorful. My most recent visit confirmed this: I enjoyed a simple, delicious pea-shoot soup and a “chorizo” tamale that even with its faux sausage could go toe-to-toe with most tamales around town.