Hi Chuck,
What was the skin you used to have in QWP 5.5 to render the menus? Please note that since 5.5 we did 2 upgrades of the Telerik controls and that changed the skins.
I'd suggest you to try to build a custom skin based on an existing skin (check this link for a tool from Telerik that helps to do that).http://stylebuilder.telerik.com/
If your issue can't be solved through the skin customization then I'd suggest you to build a toll that would change the default value to adapt it better to your needs.