Vue de Monde
Level 55, Rialto, 525 Collins St, Melbourne
03 9691 3888

Having been to the Vue de Monde One-Hr lunch with Shoe Queen previously, I know Hubby and I will be in for a treat for our 3- yr wedding anniversary.  Booking Vue de Monde was difficult if you are not super organised, we were on the Saturday waiting list for ages and then I found out that they do Sunday lunch as well- and there are vacancies!  YES!

I love the atmosphere of Vue de Monde from boarding that cool black lift that seemed to transport you to the different time and space to walking through their wine cellar into the dining area, to the very zen rocks strategically placed on the table.  Those are not just rocks, mind you, they are there for a purpose.  As the dining experience progressed, these rocks become plates, knife holder, butter/salt/pepper holder and the branch becomes fork and knife rests.

On Monday to Friday lunch time you get to choose the one hour lunch ($60), A la Carte menu ($150) and of course their signature Degustation menu ($250), but on Sunday lunch time, you don’t get to choose A la Carte and Degustation.  No matter, the A La Carte is what I would liked to try anyway.

First up some complimentary dishes, which includes: chips and vegetable dips, vension that is salted cured on the table, carrot/pinenuts/chives, ravioli and eel with white chocolate and black caviar.

Hubby who loves potato naturally loved the chips, and I bet he won’t refuse if he was offered more.

I am slightly intrigued by the eel with white chocolate, as I personally don’t like white chocolate and don’t really see how it would go well with the eel.  But of course, I need not to worry.  The white chocolate is only there to add a subtle sweetness as well as crunchiness to the eel and it was awesome.

With the a la carte menu you get to select 4 dishes.  There are 4 entrees, 4 mains and 4 desserts (coincidence?) to choose from as well as cheese, which is optional.  Whilst I love love love cheese, being lactose intolerant we both decided to choose 2 entrees, 1 main and 1 dessert (you can also choose 1 entrees, 1 main and 2 desserts if you have a sweet tooth!)

Our first entree is the rabbit- rabbit belly and legs, with smoked mashed potatoes, onions in a rabbit jus.  The thing with Vue de Monde is that depending on the combination you eat on your plate, you get different combination of textures and flavours, which are so hard to describe, and that’s the beauty of it.

I love this dish, the rabbit is so tender and it goes really well with the smokiness of the potato.  The onions, made two ways, either added texture (deep fried like onion rings) or flavour (pickled) to the dish.  I wish I had a spoon to scoop up the delicious jus also, and hubby just mop the jus up with the sourdough bread they provided.

Our second entree was ox tongue hidden underneath a  bed of spring baby vegies with Gascony butter.  Can I just say don’t be afraid of ox tongue!!  I mean, look at this dish- you won’t even notice that it’s ox tongue if they didn’t tell you!

It’s actually a very very yummie dish, a little bit salty but it really compliments the fresh vegies that comes with it!

It said on the menu Gascony butter but I couldn’t taste any butter… maybe they cooked the ox tongue with it??  (maybe my palette needs to be more refined =_=)

  We had a little bit of a break in between the entrees and main and the waiter brought out an interactive palette cleanser.  Interactive?  You asked.  You will see

In the little bowl there are all these fresh herbs and flowers, then Mr Shannon Bennett himself came out and pour some liquid nitrogen (-190 degrees he said) into the bowl to freeze dry them, then we were handed a pestle to crush the dried herbs and flowers into tiny pieces, and a cucumber sorbet was placed on these to create our palette cleanser.  Ta da!

Needless to say it was very refreshing and delicious and really prepared us for our mains.

Our mains of wagyu beef does not require the question, how would you like your steak cooked?  Cos it should only be cooked one way: very medium rare, bordering on rare.  I love my steak that way, but I am not really sure how other people who liked their steak really really dead would react, since they never actually asked the question of how they wanted their steak cooked.  I guess that’s where you stipulate that in your dietary requirement? (and if your waiter is snobby he would turn his nose up at you- thankfully it seems the waiters in Vue de Monde are pretty cool)

Anywayz, back to the dish.  As I was just admiring the pretty flowers that was foraged by the staff each morning, I noticed that hubby’s steak has a very VERY wriggly worm on the flowers!!  It was dead by the time we flagged the waiter over, and he got the chef which good naturedly replaced BOTH of our plates (sans wriggly worm).  The Wagyu was really tender, the dried apricot really cuts the fattiness of the dish.  There are cubes of Jersualem artichokes which I liked less and the bone marrow sauce is a little bit too salty for my liking.  This dish is super filling but I love it nonetheless.

After another palette cleanser, our dessert arrived- chocolate souffle with chocolate mousse and vanilla bean sauce.

I find this chocolate souffle to be way too sweet.  It was so sweet that it lost the chocolate flavours.  I ate maybe 2 mouthfuls and gave the rest to Hubby.  I usually love souffles, especially chocolate souffles so this was definitely a disappointment for me.  I think next time if I am here I will choose their lemon meringue…or maybe the carrot, pineapple… which sounded weird but hey, at Vue de Monde weird should be good right?

We ordered some peppermint tea to aid digestion (at a hefty price of $10 each!) and they gave us some petit fours to go with.  There were a stick of Gaytime icecream (Vue de Monde made of course); marshmallow with rosemary which helps reduce the sweetness; tangy lemon jubes and some mousse-like chocolate lamingtons (also wayyyy too sweet).

Overall, I love Vue de Monde.  While this time round I am not 100% satisfied with the food we ordered, the food was overall outstanding, the service was attentive and even though this is fine dining we felt quite at ease.  Would definitely visit again.  8/10