Tall Trees

Tall Trees leads with seared scallops set over a potato rosti and finished with house-made bacon jam — an appetizer that explains how the kitchen thinks before any of the dinner mains arrive. The dish carries the polish of an upscale dinner without losing the warmth a comfort plate trades on, and that hybrid is most of what makes this Huntsville restaurant feel particular. The dining rooms sit inside an early-1900s farmhouse on Main Street West, converted to restaurant use in 1984 and run as Tall Trees since Ashley Stenabaugh-Vowels and Randy Vowels took ownership in 2019. They are the chef-owners. The menu reads as theirs.

The current lunch and dinner menus lean into that polished-comfort register without staying inside one lane. Smoked Beef Bao arrives at lunch with sweet chilli glaze, quick-pickled cucumber, scallion, confit garlic aioli, chilli-ginger carrot slaw, and sesame-fried wontons — a layered plate sitting next to burgers, sandwiches, soups, and salads for diners who want a flexible midday order. Dinner opens with options like a Tall Trees Crab Cake, Whipped Feta Dip, Lemon-Tarragon Cream Mussels, or a French Onion Soup, then moves through Signature Atlantic Blackened Salmon, House-Smoked BBQ Pork Back Ribs, Pan-Seared Coconut-Crusted Ontario Pickerel, a Cabernet-Braised Lamb Shank, and an Artisanal Spanakopita Cavatelli for the table that wants pasta with a particular accent. An Aged White Cheddar and Truffle Risotto and a Vegan Stuffed Pasta Shells plate hold the meat-free lane. Saturday brings limited-quantity prime rib with house-made Yorkshire pudding, demi-glace, garlic confit mashed potatoes, and seasonal vegetables. The Three-Course Features menu hands a sixty-five-dollar appetizer-main-dessert path to diners who want the kitchen to narrow the decision.

The beverage list carries its own sense of place. Featured cocktails and mocktails are named for Huntsville landmarks and local stories — The Henry, The Empire, The Swing Bridge, The Portage Flyer — which gives a drink order something to read between sips. The building holds more rooms than a single dining hall: Front Parlour, Veranda, Dining Room, Back Parlour, Library, Scullery, Muskoka Room, and a Summer Gazebo. The mix of rooms lets a quiet date and a planned group share the building on the same evening without crowding either one. The Summer Gazebo opens up patio seating when the weather warrants. Dinner reservations run on a two-hour seat time, which is the practical way a kitchen at this level paces a service.

Ashley Stenabaugh-Vowels and Randy Vowels brought their culinary backgrounds into the dining room when they took over in 2019. What they took over was an address that had been running as a restaurant for more than three decades when they bought in. The arrangement keeps the kitchen direction and the dining-room story tied together — the menu reads like a couple's restaurant, not a managed concept handed down from elsewhere. The handful of items that feel personal — the Tall Trees Crab Cake, the smoked-meat lean of the bao and the ribs, the Spanakopita Cavatelli that recasts a Greek classic into handmade pasta — read like decisions made at the pass rather than copied from a trend.

A meal here usually ends on the Tall Trees Famous Butter Tart — served warm with vanilla bean ice cream and local maple syrup, with a deep-fried version listed for tables that want a heavier finish. That dessert is the cleanest expression of what the kitchen has decided to be: a polished Muskoka dining room that earns the ceremony of a planned dinner without losing the warmth of a tart anybody might recognize. Downtown Huntsville keeps changing around it, the Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule keeps the dining room steady, and the kitchen keeps cooking through the day from eleven-thirty in the morning until nine at night. The butter tart still closes the meal.