{"id":7849,"date":"2014-03-15T21:40:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T11:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7849"},"modified":"2014-05-28T19:20:12","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T09:20:12","slug":"vue-de-monde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7849","title":{"rendered":"Vue De Monde"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Vue De Monde is chef Shannon Bennett’s fine dining restaurant that overlooks all other restaurants in Melbourne.\u00a0 Quite literally.\u00a0 The restaurant, situated on the 55th floor of the Rialto Building, is perched at the top of the Melbourne skyline and as you’d expect, the view is absolutely breathtaking and now an integral part of the experience when dining there.<\/p>\n

Although they have been situated in this location for just 12 months, Vue De Monde has been a high profile and well recognized restaurant since 2003 when Gourmet Traveller<\/em> first awarded chef owner Shannon Bennett their Best New Talent award.<\/p>\n

Anthony Bourdain recently talked about Australian fine dining restaurants reaching a stage in their development where they felt comfortable producing high quality meals but without the pretentious decore and Vue De Monde fits that description to a tee.\u00a0 The restaurant eschews the traditional white linen tableclothes and dining sets of more toffee-nosed establishments in exchange for kangaroo-hide benchtops that can be wiped clean at a moments notice before the next course is served.\u00a0 The waiter who served us, Chris, was cheerful, knowledgable and delighted in serving us a tasting menu that, allowing for allergies and dietary requirement, was kept a surprise.<\/p>\n

The whole experience of dining at Vue was an entertaining spectacle.\u00a0 The staff initially greet you on the ground floor of the Rialto and then escort you to an elevator that doesn’t even have the 55th floor in it as a button.\u00a0 It can only be accessed by a swipe pass which makes you feel like Maxwell Smart on your way in.<\/p>\n

Jen and I purposefully arrived early so we could take a moment to enjoy the view and sample a cocktail and champagne at the adjoining Lui Bar.\u00a0 I tried the Macadamia Martini which went down a treat.<\/p>\n

The degustation was a lot of fun<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s probably not the word I was expecting to use but the chefs here delight in playful themes and concepts which they freely explore in one course and then diverge wildly elsewhere for the next.\u00a0 Its loosely described as a combination of French and molecular, according to the Gourmet Traveller<\/em> review.\u00a0 That sounds about right.\u00a0 It’s all very theatrical.<\/p>\n

Take the palate cleansers for example.\u00a0 Now, even at my favourite restaurants, the palate cleanser is a bit of a non-event.\u00a0 Its a culinary punctuation mark for when the menu switches from mains to desserts.\u00a0 At Vue De Monde, one of the palate cleansers was an interactive course where you crushed your own petals in a mortar with a pestle before pouring liquid nitrogen on top, then finally you mashed up the concoction with a cucumber sorbet.\u00a0 Ridiculous!\u00a0 Another dessert course riffed on the concept of ‘beer and nuts’ but concocting a passionfruit dessert to look like a glass of beer and then serving it with coconut balls.<\/p>\n

A word of warning – if there’s one thing Vue De Monde doesn’t hold back on, its the experimentation with a wide variety of animal products.\u00a0 I think I ate half a zoo by the time I was done here.\u00a0 Looking back, they served me lamb, beef, wallaby, pigeon, barramundi, salmon, duck, maron and spanner crab.\u00a0 So if you carry a conscience when it comes to eating animals, this might not be for you.<\/p>\n

For Jen and I though, this was a terrific experience and the perfect way to celebrate my 30th birthday.\u00a0 The dishes were inventive, the service excellent and the view spectacular.<\/p>\n

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Vue De Monde is located on the 55th floor of the Rialto building in Melbourne<\/p><\/div>\n

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To enter the restaurant, you travel via an elevator that doesn’t have a button for the floor you’re going to<\/p><\/div>\n

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Before you begin dining, its worth having a cheeky pre-dinner drink at the excellent Lui Bar<\/p><\/div>\n

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The view from the Lui Bar<\/p><\/div>\n

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I opted to go for the intriguing sounding ‘macadamia martini’. It was superb.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Like many contemporary Aussie restaurants, Vue De Monde has an open kitchen<\/p><\/div>\n

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Salmon, caviar, white chocolate<\/p><\/div>\n

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Lime raviolli<\/p><\/div>\n

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Parsnip chips<\/p><\/div>\n

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Wallaby loin<\/p><\/div>\n

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Sunflower seed parcels<\/p><\/div>\n

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Spanner crab, avocado, lime rind, radish<\/p><\/div>\n

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Marron, brown butter emulsion<\/p><\/div>\n

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Chestnut gnocci, chinese tea, eucalyptus<\/p><\/div>\n

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Barramundi, cauliflower, marrow<\/p><\/div>\n

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“Breakfast fry up” – Duck egg, lamb sweetbread, black truffle, pickled onion<\/p><\/div>\n

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Pidgeon, king brown mushrooms, spiced crisp bread<\/p><\/div>\n

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“Beer” – mango sorbet<\/p><\/div>\n

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“Nuts” – coconut balls<\/p><\/div>\n

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Cheese platter including goat cheese, sheep cheese and blue cheese<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Lemon<\/a>

Lemon balm, pineapple sage, baby parsley, cucumber sorbet, liquid nitrogen<\/p><\/div>\n

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Mandarin three ways, violet merangue<\/p><\/div>\n

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Chocolate souffle<\/p><\/div>\n

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“Austalia themed petit fours” – edible two-up coins, eucalyptus, mini lammingtons and chocolate<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vue De Monde is chef Shannon Bennett’s fine dining restaurant that overlooks all other restaurants in Melbourne.\u00a0 Quite literally.\u00a0 The restaurant, situated on the 55th floor of the Rialto Building, is perched at the top of the Melbourne skyline and as you’d expect, the view is absolutely breathtaking and now an integral part of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,415],"tags":[1327,1328,1326],"class_list":["post-7849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-food-and-drink","tag-australian-cuisine","tag-french-cuisine","tag-vue-de-monde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7849"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15448,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849\/revisions\/15448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}