Is Vue de Monde Good?

On Shannon Bennett, eras, and Vue 4.0

In the annals of Melbourne restaurant history, few restaurants have held our collective consciousness hostage in the way Vue de Monde has. Across its various incarnations, Vue has evolved from the daring gambit of a prodigal enfant terrible to, quite literally, another level; 55 floors above the city and 23 years later, Vue still stands alone as the city’s premier luxury degustation destination. In October, Vue reopened after a three month, $3 million renovation, embarking on a self-described 4th iteration, and a journey to forge a new identity separate from the all-encompassing shadow of its former driving force. It is bold, it is expensive, it is legendary in its expanse and reputation; but is Vue de Monde good? And what place does its particular brand of premium experience have in an increasingly egalitarian hospitality industry? I dined there recently, and I will tell you. But first, some table setting.

It is almost impossible to extricate the Vue de Monde brand from its former owner and chef, and even harder to tell the story of 21st century Melbourne dining without discussing Shannon Bennett. Candidly, it’s a touchy subject, and many of the issues associated with a full dissection of the Bennett story transgress into areas I don’t think appropriate for this forum. There is enough information in the public domain for people to form their own opinions, suffice to say, there is a much more complicated story to tell here. Can you separate the artist from their art? I believe you can, and want to focus more on the legacy of the chef, not the man.

The Bennett story is one of self-mythologising. Like all great cooks who are able to vault themselves into the realm of the “celebrity chef”, Bennett is a salesman; given the opportunity, the names Marco Pierre-White, John Burton-Race and Alain Ducasse will be dropped with the liberty of a chef shaving white truffle onto a VIP’s buttered pappardelle. What is unquestionable about Bennett is that he is one of the most relentlessly ambitious chefs Australia has ever produced. To have acquired this resume and managed to open his first restaurant, the original Vue on Drummond Street, at the age of 24 is remarkable. I never dined at that Vue, but to revisit reviews and photographs from the era now, the cuisine is a far cry from the futuristic molecular gastronomy Bennett would come to be known for. This was classic, old school London Michelin bait; terrines, ballotines, gastriques, oh my. Palate cleansers of phlegm coloured cucumber juice in champagne flutes, square plates, and surprisingly classical flavour combinations. 

By the time Vue graduated to the CBD and its Normanby chambers location, Bennett’s cuisine was a more realised reflection of his vision for the future, rather than trying to recreate the past. An open kitchen and heightened interaction between chef and diner became key to the restaurant, as Bennet’s focus shifted to a near obsessive pursuit of excellence. The restaurant fully embraced the degustation, and became a showcase for the nation’s most premium produce. Bennett was amongst the first to champion David Blackmore’s Australian wagyu beef, Mark Eather’s sustainable seafood, and Moonlight Flat oysters. The chef was achieving accolades at a pace never before seen by any Australian, scoring an unprecedented 19/20 in the Good Food Guide, and attracting international acclaim. When the legendary Ferran Adria of El Bulli came to speak in Australia, Bennett was chosen to help interview him. Sitting in the audience at Hamer Hall, I was struck by how sickly Benett looked. Hunched over, straggly, oily hair and a pallid, gaunt face, he looked more Howard Hughes than the golden boy of Australian cooking. The last of a generation of old-school chefs, this was clearly a man burning the candle at both ends.

From here we arrive at our destination, level 55 of the Rialto, on Melbourne’s Collins Street. A collaboration between Bennett and the city’s property development crown prince Lorenz Grollo, the new Vue was the most ambitious restaurant Australia had ever seen. Taking in near 360 degree views of the city, the dining room was a spacious mix of futuristic BDSM dungeon and Australiana kitsch, the kitchen the equivalent of an environmentally conscious Death Star. This was the new pinnacle in Australian restaurants, and owing to the grandeur and scale of its execution, the most expensive as well. In the years since, and through fluctuations in Benett’s personal reputation and various ancillary businesses, Vue has remained Melbourne’s go-to for a blow out, over the top celebration. I haven’t dined there since 2013, my memories of it being a very long, indulgent, long, largely enjoyable, and long experience. I was interested to see how the restaurant would move on from Bennett’s all encompassing legacy. Bennett sold his majority stake in the Vue group (which, just quietly, constituted significantly more venues then than it does now) for a reported $15 million in 2016, to a Singaporean real estate group. The chef, who in modern times has exhibited increasingly Joe Rogan-adjacent attitudes, moved to (where else) Byron Bay, where it appears he is essentially retired from the restaurant industry. 

Having now exited the group completely, Bennett’s former padawan Hugh Allen holds the creative reins. While chefs in the early 2000s trumpeted their tenures under Marco Pierre-White or Ferran Adria, Allen boasts that most sought-after accreditation: The Redzepi effect. How much of Noma’s renowned nature-based inventiveness would this new Vue showcase? Was I about to embark on an evening of green ants and fermented elk appendix? I was excited to find out.

Upon arrival, we are greeted at the elevator by an affable and confident host. As we are led past the newly configured Lui bar and through the restaurant’s impressive wine display, I’m curious as to what exactly the $3 million was spent on. The general aesthetic is the same, the floor plan slightly altered, but if I wasn’t directly told about the restaurant’s renovations, I’d have guessed it was more or less the same as it was when I visited a decade ago. Upon being seated we are presented with a wine list so gargantuan as to not be containable within the earthly realms of paper; swiping through an iPad screen, the exercise feels like an unromantic, if environmentally responsible, one. 

Opting instead for a cocktail to start the evening, we select a Macadamia martini and a cold brew vodka cocktail, theatrically served in a V60 dripper over crushed ice. Both are repulsive.

The martini, sickly sweet, is closer in profile to a TGI Friday’s appletini than the elegant, arctic breeze of restorative truth that a martini should afford. The coffee cocktail, as my dining mate described, tasted like Cadbury dairy milk flavoured cordial. Both drinks completely missed the mark of a venue espousing this level of refinement, and if what we received was the intended result, should have their recipes altered immediately.

The experience of the aperitifs could not have been more at odds with our opening course, delivered and introduced by Allen himself, who has an air of humble shyness uncommon with someone so young and accomplished. We are presented with a shallow bowl of blood-red chilled radish broth, dotted with raspberry oil and hibiscus flower petals, the ceramic vessel immersed in crushed ice. Outside, an oppressive, overcast 34 degree day rages, and when this broth hits my mouth with its earthy, complex bitterness, I am refreshed and realigned. It is divine, thoughtfully presented with a chilled hand towel. Served alongside, half of a single 5c piece sized radish. Restraint is a major element of this sort of cooking, but half of one tiny radish seemed needlessly miserly. A small selection of heirloom, seasonal veg served dotted around the ice on the broth’s edges would have been a more welcoming sight.

To follow, a bite sized canape of avocado, the irony of Tim Gurner’s infamous “If you want a house, stop buying avocado toast” quote not lost on us as we embark on the second course of our $360 per person menu. The dish is exquisite, continuing the cold and refreshing theme, various textures and treatments of avocado resulting in a varied and elegant textural experience, recalling the best guacamole you’ve ever had. However, just like Tim Gurner, the dish is missing something. The menu lists it as having borage, and indeed the dish is shown on Instagram and the venue’s website as being decorated with the distinctive blue flowers. When we take a tour of the kitchen later,  the dish is being constructed, complete with the borage flowers. Did our dish need the borage flowers? I don’t know; I certainly enjoyed it, but this was strange, and the sending of an unfinished dish is not something you’d normally see in a restaurant of the standard that Vue aspires to.

Each dish is delivered with enthusiasm and authenticity. The staff are intensely well-versed in every component of every course, each one explained in fantastic detail, as they happily swan around the room, gracefully delivering every morsel. It’s a sight to behold; at a table nearby, I see the floor manager wobble a table decoration exploratively, shooting a disapproving look at a waitress when it collapses. Little debriefs are held after each interaction, feedback given in real time; it’s a high stakes environment, but as far as customer interactions go, Vue is more informal than in previous incarnations. A sense of relaxed, confident professionalism is the prevailing energy.

Our next course, a battered and fried Zucchini flower stuffed simply with the diced flesh of the zucchini itself. If, in fact, the dish purposely tasted like a fried fish & chip shop dim sim, as I suspect it did, it is an act of genius, the perfect melding of nostalgia and loving parody, elevated with precision. If that wasn’t intended, it’s just a lovely fried zucchini flower. Either way, the winner is me, as the outline of Allen’s cuisine starts to show itself; playful, restrained, veg-forward, and elegant. It’s all winners so far.

Next up, a fleeting glimpse of the luxury of fine dining’s past, hidden in a ceramic egg-shaped orb. The lid is lifted, and inside, a globule of dark emerald caviar, nestled upon a dense, fudgy macadamia puree. Drizzled around the edges, a smokey kelp oil, redolent of the katsuobushi and miso accents of some dreamscape ramen. It’s a stop and take stock moment; frankly, an inspired dish, something that wouldn’t be out of place on the menu at Allen’s former place of work in Copenhagen. We’re really rolling now; the next dish, something of a new restaurant signature, arrives presented on an empty mud crab shell, set on a bed of sand. What appears to be a golden bite-sized crumpet is actually a velvety chickpea panisse, pleasingly hot, its silken texture giving way to threads of juicy, sweet mudcrab meat. A waft of saffron hits your nostrils, like standing over a pot of bouillabaisse in a Marseille fisherman’s kitchen; it's a deeply sensory moment. It ranks as one of the most purely enjoyable dishes I’ve had in a restaurant, at least since the pandemic.

The following course is one of the last remnants of Bennett’s tenure, and one of only two dishes by my estimation that reference the former chef. This one, a tail of pearlescent WA marron, is presented with a whole finger lime, to be squeezed over the top, and a separate ramekin of glossy native herb XO sauce. It’s elegant, presented ornately with a set of Christofle chopsticks, but feels unrealised. The flavours are pleasant, the “XO'' displaying the originality and innovation you’d expect at this level, but the dish needs tweaking aesthetically, and could be easier to eat. In tandem with this, a dish titled “the rest of the marron'', a warm marron head custard decorated tableside with a rich sauce. Overwhelmingly buttery and over seasoned, the dish’s luxurious texture is welcomed, but the flavour of the crayfish is all but lost amongst the accoutrements.

Chef Hugh reappears, bringing with him the next course, simply titled “capsicum, eggplant, nasturtium”. Seemingly an attempt to have a purely plant based dish on the menu, it constitutes a small roasted capsicum, filled with an eggplant puree, and dressed with a deep green nasturtium sauce. It is uncharacteristically dull, perhaps a token attempt to showcase the kitchen’s affinity for vegetables, but to be completely honest, it’s bad. My portion, already very small, has significantly less filling than my dining mate’s. In a world of changing perceptions of what can constitute fine dining, where a restaurant like Eleven Madison Park has retained three Michelin stars while pivoting completely to plant based cuisine, we should expect better from veggies.

A palate cleanser arrives at a curious time in the menu, before the two meat courses, but I’m grateful to be moving on from the previous course. We are presented with a stone bowl of rose and hibiscus flowers. Liquid nitrogen is poured into the bowl at tableside, after which we are invited to muddle the now frozen petals into a powder. A scoop of watermelon sorbet is then plopped into the bowl; it has the density and balance of really well made sorbet, and is a lovely mid-menu detour, particularly on a hot day.

More theatrics arrive, as a large trolley is wheeled to our table. “Are you ready to go camping?” we are asked. Live charcoal is removed from a barrel and placed on a bowl of stones, a sort of recreation of a campfire; smoke billowing upwards, two pieces of par baked heritage wheat damper bread are then placed directly onto the coals, to char and toast. Funky, cheesy cultured butter is skillfully paddled onto our table, and the damper presented to us. It dawns on me that, 75 minutes into the meal, this is the bread course. I was too caught up in the excitement of the early dishes to notice, and rules are made to be broken, but no bread? Surely one of the hidden benefits of visiting expensive restaurants like this are all of the little surprises along the way; of all the unique and surprising ways that a restaurant can offer bread throughout a meal, this method was perhaps too smart for its own good. Disappointingly, the damper itself is just okay, indistinguishable from a standard flatbread, and not really cutting it in the current climate of extraordinary baking happening all over our city.

Served alongside the damper, an absolute knockout dish. Not normally being a fan of lamb sweetbreads, I was nonetheless impressed to see such an offal-forward dish featured so prominently on the menu; the gland, perfectly cooked to a sweet, savoury, gelatinous ideal, swimming in a vichyssoise of creamy fermented koji, and decorated generously with grilled and diced asparagus. It’s a complete delight. Moreish, unctuous and perfectly seasoned, it’s the sort of cooking I’d have liked to have seen more of at Vue. Savouries conclude with a thin piece of Blackmore wagyu, about credit card size, perfectly cooked and served with a profoundly rich sauce of maitake mushrooms. It’s perfectly executed, a nice showcase for the beef, but is inescapably small, and unadorned by any sort of carbohydrate or substantial garnish. This is the main course of what purports to be Melbourne’s most expensive and glamorous restaurant, and needed to be more generous and satisfying than it was. Minimalism has veered into miserliness a little too frequently during this meal.

This realisation that the meal is coming to an end is intensified when the famous Vue de Monde cheese cart rolls around to our table. The feeling isn’t quite “is that it?”, but the general consensus is “we were expecting more food”. Nonetheless, it’s cheese time, which is always a good time. Vue have decided to feature entirely Australian cheeses on the trolley, in line with a renewed focus on local flavours. I think this is great, and believe that many Australian cheeses are as good as European cheeses, but this is Vue de Monde. This is quite literally the most expensive tasting menu in Australia, and many of the cheeses served here I can get from my local deli; I would have liked to have seen something rarer or more unique about what we received. Condiments of local honeycomb, golden beetroot relish and beetroot compote are outstanding, but the slices of what appeared to be store-bought fruit and nut bread served alongside, verging on stale, left me longing for the glamorous case of imported and rare European cheeses I received under Bennett’s reign. The delivery and explanation of each cheese’s provenance and production techniques by our waitress was world class; at every turn, the service impresses.

For a little pre-dessert detour, we are whisked away into the impressive kitchen. As we enter, each chef greets and acknowledges us; the whole team really is locked in to customer engagement. A charismatic young chef greets us and walks us through our next dish, to be eaten in the kitchen amongst the chefs. A sort of a riff on the classic Melbourne hot jam donut truck, we are each presented with a golf ball sized donut that the chef will personalise for us with a choice of two native ingredient sugars and two fruit jams. It’s a fun detour, heightened by the natural charm of the chef, and the donut is quite delicious. But I’m left with the impression that this is a token effort to do something that other fine dining restaurants do; the feeling that this is a restaurant looking for an identity that it hasn’t quite settled on yet. Why not offer more than two flavour options? Why not more than one donut; they’re certainly not expensive to produce. The product is not so dazzling that it forgives a lack of generosity.

We return to our table, where after a small pause, we are presented with what is the quintessential Vue signature; the souffle. It is breaktaking; perfectly risen and symmetrical, a shimmering raindrop of chocolate ganache sitting on top. At tableside, our chef torpedoes an artfully pulled quenelle of “billy tea ice cream” into the souffle’s airy depths. It is a moment of pure luxury, the billy tea ice cream an inspired injection of Australiana, the souffle itself a textbook example of the form. As I eat it, I’m reminded of the all-encompassing pleasure that such a luxurious meal can deliver. To finish, two petit fours; a “Matilda biscuit” in green and gold, white chocolate, wattle and saltbush, and a peppermint gum slice, a play on the classic after dinner biscuit. Both are great concepts, but have the execution of a school bake sale caramel slice; lumpy, congealed fats, both chocolate coatings are seized and chalky. It’s a disappointing end, and in stark contrast to the perfect execution of the souffle.

We are allowed a leisurely, unhurried period of rest after the meal; Vue no longer has multiple PM sittings, and it’s generally lovely to sit and observe the city as the sun sets over the horizon. For a Wednesday night, the room is pumping; several large family groups happily chat away the evening, along with the requisite couples sharing a romantic night out. I recall on my previous visit to Vue being given a selection of items to take home; a small loaf of brioche, house made jam, a bag of granola, and some fruit candies. This is a hallmark of the ultra-expensive restaurant; some offer a personalised menu and macarons, others a jar of house made pickles. A small token of appreciation, and a keepsake commemorating such a special meal. At the new Vue, there is nothing; just a bill, a warm thank you, and off you go into the night. While such things aren’t mandatory, the new Vue exists in uncharted waters: at $360 a head per person for food only, it is comfortably among the most expensive set menus in Australia, in line with what is charged at Brae, Attica and Quay. The lack of any sort of parting gift is endemic of my experience at Vue 4.0; almost everything is good, but there is a lack of generosity. The accoutrements that are the hidden delights of fine dining, such as elaborate bread offerings, surprise dishes, creative sides and collectable keepsakes, are all missing here. What we are left with is a streamlined, restrained, verging on parsimonious menu. 

So, is Vue de Monde worth it? The answer lies in where your passions lie. A-Reserve tickets to The Eras Tour are $379, roughly equivalent to the menu at Vue. Whilst I personally would rather plunge my head into a kebab shop grease trap than spend that on Taylor Swift, for those indoctrinated into that parish, that price would seem like a steal after 3 hours of non-stop hits. This meal at Vue was less Eras Tour and more a blend of showstoppers and the sort of experimental, unfinished songs better suited to rehearsal. The cheapest tickets to the Australian Open finals will set you back $349, and if you hate tennis, this is the equivalent of a very elongated and anaesthetic-free root canal; but to a tennis lover, this is a small price to pay for such a lauded and scarce event.

Vue lies somewhere in the middle at its current price point; on one hand, that is the price of doing business in 2023, and the sort of skilled and dedicated staff that Vue employs, rightfully, don’t come cheap. There is some incredible cooking here, a few dishes I’ll never forget, but quite a few misses as well. Allen is an exciting talent, but not yet the finished product, and Vue in its current guise isn’t delivering the top to bottom standard of food that its price point requests. I’m excited to see where Allen takes Vue, but would urge the powers that be to not forget to give the punter their money’s worth along the way.

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Vue de Monde

55 Rialto Towers, 525 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000

(03) 9691 3888

https://vuedemonde.com.au/