gui/menu in a map-based game

[Clemens]

Having a tilemap-based game I want to show a menu at the bottom or right side of the screen.
What would be the best way of implementing such a menu?
At the moment I have my own component classes (buttons, label,..) adding these objects to a manager class which calls their draw method (and also the draw methode of the tilemap object). But doing this it seems a bit overloaded to me and not very performance friendly.
What is the common way of realizing a menu or information panels beside the outstanding central tilemap?

[Jeff]

Well anyone doing active rendering just handles it themselves as part of the render loop.

What your environment? is this an applet or application?  It sounds like you are using the AWT render pipeline, which is necessary in Applets but far from ideal for Applications.