Vue de monde/Beautifully measured elegance

Its been over twenty four hours since we entered the private lift that takes you to Vue de monde and I’m still buzzing from the five and a half hour experience, and yes that is what it is, its not just dinner, its not just sustenance, its not just a theatre show… it is every one of these and much much more. Fair enough it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but those people don’t read this blog and quite frankly they are weird.

Lauren and I have been on holiday now for a few weeks and have had our fair share of good food, lots of quality wine and an abundance of incredible company. In fact it was on the morning before this that we where treated to what will most likely be the best breakfast we will ever eat, this is for several reasons… firstly because the 5 course breakfast dego at Lilianna’a was mind blowing in execution, flavours where jumping from the plate, visually it was stunning and if you know my girl Lauren then you will know she takes breaky very seriously and she was as happy a pig in the proverbial poo. What made this particular meal extra special was that my very good friend and co-blogger is the head chef there and cooked the whole thing for us… without being condescending in any way I couldn’t be more proud of what Graeme has achieved both in the kitchen as a chef and at home as a father and husband, we had a ball staying with the Stocky’s.

But this post is called Vue de monde, not we love G-bags, so back to the story at hand… so given all the culinary delights we have been privy too it is always hard to impress us and when expectations are so high in the case of such a restaurant, its even harder to match expectations. But they didn’t just match them they blew them out of the effing water, from the first person to greet us to the person that loving laughed as we couldn’t see the lift to leave the place as there was just too many mirrors for our inebriated minds, so we tried to look cool as we spun around at the end of a corridor pushing walls hopping they where doors.

This is what makes a restaurant special, its not the food, its not the service, its not the setting…. It HAS to be all of them and more to make it memorable and special. The cocktail bar we sat in to start of with was cool but being that it was daytime, it did have that strange vibe and if you’ve ever been in a nightclub in the day you’ll know what I mean. But then they handed us the cocktail menu, it was a mother fucking POP UP BOOK. Now, most of you won’t know this but I fucking love pop up books and for the love god have no idea why they’re not used more. It was simply the tits!!! A brilliant story for every well planned drink, but me being me, I simply ordered a grey goose caprioska, because that’s what I do, Lauren how ever tried a champagne/gin number which was delicious, as was mine.

I don’t know about you lot but I love to check out toilets, not in a glory hole kinda way, and definitely not in a no toilet seat, metal public toilet arrangement… but when in flash joints I like to check out the lav. So off I went not knowing what to expect, well it was dreamy (yes that’s right) like the toilets in heaven will be like, the sink was so cool I got my phone out to take a photo, and as you all know there is an unspoken rule about taking photo’s in public toilets, but I had to and luckily I wasn’t caught in the act. They don’t even have soap as all there water both in the toilets and kitchen is a special water with a saline solution added that cleans dirt with out chemicals and the kitchen it has ph of 9 for normal cleaning and a special setting for sanitizing that comes out at a ph of 2…. SCIENCE

Time to have some food me thinks so I signal to the bar man that we are ready to enter the restaurant… I at this time have no fucking idea where the restaurant is mind you, there seems to be no doors leaving the small bar in which we are sitting. Then our waiter arrives seemingly from thin air and leads us back towards the lift, for a second I thought they’re onto me and my photos in the toilet and we’re being booted out… but then he presses the wall on his right and a door magically opens on our left, it leads into a climate controlled wine cellar which I could of stayed in for ever, but alas I was lead straight through into the restaurant and sat at our table over looking Melbourne, which is a great city but lets face it not that pretty. But the table was massive for two people and had a selection of rocks on it. Yes I said rocks. This seemed strange at first but by the end of the dinner all of said rocks had a purpose, from containing salt and pepper, to holding cutlery, to being used for plates… later on our tour of the kitchen the sous chef explained how the theory is the restaurant is meant to feel like a camp fire… this however is bollocks and I pretty much told him that (in a nice way of course)

Then food started to arrive instantly, before we even got a glimpse of a menu, in fact we never did get to see a menu at all… this was very cool and different as I’m a control freak and like to know what going on… but it was a revelation to not know anything that was coming. But of course, we also had no idea how much it was all costing and since we went for the 10 course dego with extra’s like the freshly shaved White Hungarian White Truffle and a bottle of 98 shiraz then you can all imagine that the bill was large. Now what ever you just imagined the bill to be, you should double what you thought and you might be correct now… it was a lot of coin, but in my humble, got no kids or mortgage opinion it was worth every penny.

We ate truffled marshmallows, white chocolate coated eel, salt and vinegar crisps with macadamia cream and wallaby cured on a hot salt rock in front of us and rolled by one of the 15 chefs with micro herbs. This was all before we had even told them we wanted the 10 course dego and all of the above was to die for, flavours where bang on!

There was many staff aiding our dining experience from a wine consultant to a tea sommelier, which we thought was amazing. She would match tea with any course instead of wine, pure brilliance… of course we tried her out on one course and she hit the nail right on the head, a great matching and a very novel idea I feel we will see a lot more of. But along with our waiter and several runners and chefs coming to prepare dishes at the table there was a bevy of people which in many cases could be too much, but it wasn’t they showed restraint, in both service and food preparation, it all could of quite easily been over the top but it really wasn’t. It was beautifully measured elegance.

As the experience went on, we where served amazing dish after dish, Laurens favourite was a slow cooked duck egg with black truffle paste, toast crisps and fresh white truffle. Mine was the French onion soup that came to the table in a coffee syphon cona thingy and was then poured into a bowl with onion three ways and a foam of something (seriously cannot remember what it was but was incredible). Theatrics where ever present but not ridiculous, all was magnificent and I only seasoned 2 out of 16 courses… yes that’s right we ended up eating 16 separate courses, fair enough some where just a mouth full but all worthy of being called a dish in its own right.

We where there, as stated, for 5 ½ hours which is a record for us, as we generally eat and run, but even then we where not rushed out near the end we where offered more wine, drinks and even taken on a tour of all kitchens, functions rooms and bars… take note all of you fucktards in Perth that kick you out at 8pm so the next sitting can come in, you can fuck right off with that attitude. I have decided from now on to make a booking at both 6pm and 8pm and when they kick me out, I’ll simply move to my next booked table… check and mate!

As we finished our day off in the cocktail bar in which we had started, but now eating the cheese which signaled the end of our experience, they still managed at this point to blow us away… they gave us a bag of freshly prepared goods for us to have for breakfast the next day… this contained a loaf of brioche, honey, muesli, cookies and tea, all of the finest quality…

Hats off to you Vue de monde, you guys are the best of the best and worth every god damn penny.