Vue de Monde - Excellent service, modernist cuisine, amazing view

With all fine dining, you hope that you are not just a meal but an experience. You want the food and service to be thought-provoking if not down-right spectacular.

Vue de Monde is Melbourne's answer to modernist fine dining.  On the 55th floor of the Rialto building, it is a wonderful way to spend an evening with friends who love to travel and eat.

I love food, particularly street food. On occasion, I will look for a restaurant that can elevate food to a higher level. If I am going to a modernist restaurant, I'm not looking to the chef trying to show off that he knows chemistry well enough to make faux caviar with sodium citrate or alginate. Nor am I looking for ma-bao tofu oil turned into powder using maltodextrin then placed on thin slices of tofu. If deconstruction of a classic dish is your thing, I'm not your customer.  I'm looking for a chef who can take ingredients do something more.  So...when I tasted the most cliché of cocktails, the Old Fashioned, I was hopeful my hard earned money was going to be well spent. Using leatherwood honey, the transformed by making it a savory and piquant.

Vue de Monde, The brainchild of chef/owner Shannon Bennett, the restaurant is a cool, classy homage to all things Australian, from the ingredients to the table settings made of kangaroo pelts. If you are having dinner during sunset, the restaurant certainly matches its name. 

The restaurant delivers on all fronts, especially their rocks. When you start the meal you an array of rocks are placed in the center of the table. Those of you who have been, know what I am referring to. Some rocks are utensil rests. Some rocks hold seasoning. Some are used to cook your wallaby. Some of the rocks you eat. The rocks are tasty. No really! Here look:

Tasty, tasty rocks. Yep gonna eat rocks for dinner. I'll let you guess which one I took a bite out off 

It was an amuse bouche, a single bite hors-d'oeuvre or mouth pleaser.  In plain English: a morsel of food to give you a hint of the chef's skill and the meal to come.  

So check out the gallery below. When I get a moment I will add more to this post. Suffice to say, if you are willing to pay for fine dining, this is a place to visit.