Health and flavor

The Treehouse, which has occupied an unprepossessing blue-and-white building in the less affluent part of Farmington for 18 years now, evokes immediately all the stereotypes about very-health-conscious food. The shabby deli-cum-grocery-cum-supplements store looks like it hasn't had a makeover in 30 years. Dusty boxes carry labels like "soup recipe enema flyer"; you can find a self-published manual titled Drown Radio-Vision and Homo-Vibra Ray Instruments and Their Use, 1951, by one Ruth B. Drown. Shelves display dozens of big glass jars of herbs, spices and mugwort; cases exhibit a jumble of rocks, shells and a hornet's nest.

Manager Matt DiTonio Yanke says he doesn't even notice how the place looks, focusing instead on the kitchen. "We don't fool around," Yanke says. "We are extremely serious."

But set the setting aside, and you can find some tasty, inexpensive, certified organic meals at the Treehouse. The place is undogmatic about everything except "organic" and "no meat," serving both raw and cooked, vegan and eggs. There's even a salmon sandwich.

The Treehouse is perhaps best known for its 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday all-you-can-eat. The first two Sundays of the month are Mexican, Mediterranean or both, the third Sunday is 100 percent raw, and the fourth serves Dr. Max Gerson's diet — a regimen that uses no salt, dairy, nuts or processed sugars, "our most vegan day." (Gerson's diet won't cure cancer, as he claimed, but it won't hurt you to eat it for a day — and you can skip the prescribed coffee enemas.)

Sundays often involve a movie, short lecture or live music, such as Charlene Berry on the hammered dulcimer. I visited on a Mexican-Italian afternoon when Koyaanisqatsi was playing and found platters to lure in the nonbeliever — chocolate chip pancakes — as well as those for the hard core. Few of the many dishes on offer required good teeth.

"It's like heaven," I overheard a nearby diner say. "All week you eat food that tastes like paper, and then you come here. ..." She could have chosen among two lasagnas, raw and pasta, house-made tortillas with "taco nuts," scrambled eggs and hash browns, a green salad, a very sweet, royal-purple yam-and-beet dish, shredded carrots and apples, and even a couple of raw "pies" and "cakes."

My favorite was the fiery nut mix — almonds, walnuts, pistachios — spiced with chilies. A salad of beet greens was pretty grassy but well and subtly dressed. Scrambled eggs were replete with vegetables and onions; hashed browns were unfortunately limp. A kefir kombucha punch — fermented milk and fermented tea — was quite sweet and thick. It's tough to create a crust if you won't cook, so very sweet raw apple pie had none on the bottom and just a little crumb crust on top. Raw carrot cake was really a pudding, topped with coconut, the texture baby-like but the flavors complex.

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