Treetop Café, Bath: A view worth climbing for, if only you didn’t have to eat when you got there
There is something quietly tragic about the Treetop Café in Bath, like the final scenes of a low-budget rom-com where the leads realise they have absolutely no chemistry, and so go their separate ways to die alone. You arrive at this potentially lovely building, perched high above the city like some whimsical treehouse retreat, and instead find yourself in what can only be described as a laminated-flyer fever dream.
The menus, for example, appear to have been printed during a paper shortage, left out in the rain, and then repeatedly tea-bagged — and not in a fun way. Creased, stained and designed with the aesthetic flair of a dentist’s waiting room circa 1997, they are your first warning that nobody here gives a damn about how anything looks, tastes, or functions.
There is, of course, no table service. Because why would you want to relax and enjoy the view when you could queue awkwardly at a counter, balancing between polite confusion and mild rage? Ordering involves a level of friction usually reserved for divorce mediation. Want sugar with your drink? Tough. Salt and pepper? Only if you’ve brought your own. Cutlery? Available in two styles: cheap and dirty.
Food-wise, it’s all so aggressively okay that you begin to suspect the chef has taken a solemn vow to never feel joy again. The kimchi, strangely, is a high point — the culinary equivalent of finding a fiver in a pair of old jeans. Tasty, lively, a flicker of competence in an otherwise beige parade of mediocrity. No candles, no flowers, no charm, no effort. Just food on plates.
And all this for £26, which is neither bargain nor rip-off, just another number to add to the pile of regrets. The view, I’ll grant, is lovely — the sort of thing you’d be happy to frame if you didn’t have to sit through this dreary ordeal to see it.
Would I come back? Only if you held my family hostage. Even then, I’d negotiate.
2.5 stars, and most of that’s for the view.