Treehouse Cafe & Coffee

Biscuits first at the counter

The biscuit case leads Treehouse Cafe & Coffee. Everything else arranges itself around homemade biscuits and a breakfast built on them, which is a clear enough centre of gravity that most regulars settle the food before they think about the drink. The shop sits in the Scarborough Faire Shoppes in Duck, and it has become known for those biscuits and for a twist on the usual breakfast list.

Coffee is the other half. Treehouse pours Counter Culture, roasted in North Carolina, which ties a small Outer Banks cafe to a serious in-state roaster rather than to a generic house blend. The drinks run to espresso drinks and cold brew, and the mocha is the one people come back for.

A small room with the door open

The room is compact, a coffee-house counter in a retail village rather than a dining room. There is outdoor seating, which on a good morning is effectively where most of the room is, and it suits a town where the point is to be outside anyway.

The flow is quick: order at the counter, wait, take it in or out. Nothing about the service is ceremonial. What Treehouse has instead is a breakfast rush, a friendly counter and a reputation strong enough that people queue for biscuits and coffee before the day starts. A resident cat wandering around outside adds to the vacation-town informality.

Order the Buttermilk Fried Chicken Biscuit

Start with the Buttermilk Fried Chicken Biscuit. It is the signature, and it explains the cafe faster than the rest of the menu: a homemade biscuit first, then a comfort-food build on top of it. It is customizable, so egg, melted cheese, avocado, a honey drizzle or jam can go on depending on whether you want it savory, sweet or both at once.

Pair it with an espresso drink or a cold brew, the two beverage categories the cafe names itself, and take the mocha if you want the one most often praised. Yogurt and coffee cake sit on the lighter side for anyone not in the mood for a biscuit sandwich, but they are the alternative rather than the point.

Treated as what it is, a breakfast cafe with Counter Culture coffee and a biscuit programme carrying the visit, Treehouse is easy to use: come early, order the chicken biscuit, take a coffee, and eat outside.