The sky’s the limit – Vue de Monde, Melbourne

Chef Shannon Bennett has long been the darling of Melbourne’s foodies, bloggers, guide book inspectors and reviewers. He has worked his way from the award for “Best new talent” in 2003 to a top score of three chef’s hats in the well respected “The Age Good Food Guide” 2010.  He has also moved his restaurant, Vue de Monde twice, the latest migration being in June 2011 when after many months of building work it re-opened on the 55^th floor  of the Rialto – a central Melbournian skyscraper.  Happily Vue de Monde opened a week before my visit to Melbourne and I was able to pop in for a spot of lunch.

This restaurant has the kind of view that gives you a nose-bleed and if you suffer from vertigo you will not be happy, but the design element is taken very seriously. A large bar with an amazing view, a large restaurant with an amazing view, décor that is intensely black and silver and an open kitchen in the middle, no glass, nothing separating diners and chefs. You cannot help wondering how the extraction works,  but it does. The dining tables are large and admirably well spaced – they are also topped with kangaroo hide and painted black. The cruet is hidden within river rocks that have been split cunningly and reassembled. During the meal each rock reveals its function one  serves as butter dish and another as knife stand. It’s a pleasing conceit as you survey the pile of pebbles on the black tables.

The service is slick. A well-informed sommelier will guide you through an epic wine list, strong on Victorian wines but with enough great names to intimidate even the most doughty wallet. Various chefs present dishes at table much as they do at Noma, is this a trend? We eat a succession of dishes, all are grandstand affairs and most require finishing touches of varying complexity at table.

You may be presented with a soup bowl containing an array of different mushrooms, then an old fashioned Cona coffee machine is pressed into service, as a consommé of field mushrooms is heated up it siphons into the top of the device where there are pine needles and wood chips. When it filters back down the consommé is poured over the mushrooms in the bowl. “Voila”, mushroom soup with a whiff of the forest. Nice bowl of soup. 

Another dish is simple but very good: served on a long plate you get a tiny oxtail sandwich, crisp and well seasoned, also a single, monster, crayfish tail; then a dollop of brown butter cream – magnificent, the brown butter cream is savoury, rich and a terrific second cousin to beurre noisette.

Then a dish that is all artifice but nevertheless steals the show. You get given a small pestle and mortar containing micro herbs and flowers, a splash of liquid nitrogen freezes them and makes them brittle. You pound them to dust which is eaten with a cucumber sorbet. This tastes so fresh, light, green and lovely that you overlook the hype.

Or how about kangaroo fillet and smoked turnip served on a piece of wood (heated in the oven to release sappy, woody notes and served with radishes? Rich red meat, elusive flavours nailed down, impressive stuff.

By the time you meander towards dessert there’s another fantastic “throwaway” dish – a small lollipop turns out to be made of apple sorbet in a sugary, “toffee apple” jacket with a pile of popping candy. Sometimes a trip back to childhood is a delight.

Shannon Bennett is pushing hard. Admirably his restaurant is eco-friendly, (recycled this and that, special energy-saving systems). He is passionate about using local ingredients. Technically, the standard of cooking is as good as anywhere I have ever eaten. In short, a meal at Vue de Monde is full on and there is enough Wow factor to please foodies and socialites alike.

Just one thing, this is an Australian restaurant, proudly serving exceptionally good Australian food, so why is the menu written in old-fashioned menu French? The name Vue de Monde may be French but the cooking certainly isn’t.  Seize the moment, this kind of Australian cooking deserves respect and its own vocabulary.

And then there is the matter of price: to impoverished Brits getting $1.35 to the £ Vue de Monde falls into the super-pricy category. But it’s worth it.

Vue de Monde, Level 55, Rialto, 525 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

( +61 3 9691 3888  www.vuedemonde.com.au)