Cafe Vue
401 St. Kilda Rd.
Melbourne
03 9866 8055

Super chef Shannon Bennett is a bit like some of his signature dishes:  exciting, visionary, unpredictable and not easy to slot into a category.
He first became known to Melbourne diners with his stunning Vue de Monde in Carlton.

I remember it, more than fondly, because I had my sixtieth birthday party there. A wonderful afternoon of great wine and champagne and the best, continuous, stream of so-called finger food for sixty guests that I’d ever experienced.

Then, in what is usually business suicide, Bennett folded his tent and re-pitched it in the city, in Little Collins Street. And the restaurant flourished and he continued to accumulate a wardrobe full of Age Good Food Guide hats and other national and international awards.

In 2009 Vue de Monde was one of only two places in Victoria to be awarded Three Hats.  The other, justifiably was Jacques Raymond in Windsor.

Never content, the young entrepreneurial chef next opened  Café Vue and Bistro Vue next door, the latter a ‘mini-Monde’ that The Age described as ‘a restaurant more like the stage set for a 19th Century French drama’.

Bennett continued his French theme in late 2009 when he opened his fourth Melbourne venue, another Café Vue, in a new boutique apartment building on St. Kilda Road – an avenue I am trying to get renamed Melbourne Boulevard. It’s just down the street from the heritage listed Royce Hotel and Dish restaurant.  I’m rapt. It’s not even a napkin throw from my place.

The centrepiece is a stark, white, birdcage-looking appendage that Bennett claims is based on Marie Antoinette’s crinoline. And, I’m told, the women’s ablutions room is painted red to signify the bloody French Revolution and the guillotine. Bennett always was one for sly humour. (Like his now trademark of mismatched antique cutlery at Bistro Vue and Café  Vue).

Café Vue was long overdue on this broad stretch of apartments and offices.
And it has been packed for lunch every day since it opened. The opening was delayed when Bennett had a run in with the liquor Police who at first refused him a licence at all.  Despite the fact that a pizzeria and a couple of Oriental places, plus Dish, all have liquor licences within a few metres of the new establishment.

Now Café Vue is open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and through the day and most nights for dinner. It’s part café and part partisserie with great croissants, and sandwiches and cakes and delicious French baguettes and loaves to eat there or take away.

It’s also got an old-fashioned rotisserie for roasting quail and chicken and beef – hence the pink neon Le Roti sign out front.

It’s going to be a great weekend brunch place. They serve ‘breakfast’ until 3p.m. Saturday and Sunday. And the prices are as cheap as Vue De Monde
is expensive. Croque-monsieur with Kurobuta ham  $6.50.  A duck cassoulet Jaffle $6.50.  Corn fritter with avocado and tomato, eight bucks. Croissants and Danishes are $3.50.

 A favourite lunch for me and Mrs. Nosebag is a salad and salmon sandwich (including bean sprouts) on toasted multi-grain bread. And the huge Wagyu burger with fries looks like the most popular lunch dish.

They also have a variety of pies for around $11. Lamb and lentil, potato and leek, duck, Wagyu, and a chicken and porcini mushroom pie which must be good because they’ve always run out when I get there. I told them I thought they were a myth invented by the Reader’s Digest. I first used that line about Bert Newton when I came to Melbourne to take him on in radio thirty years ago.

Dinner was a bit of a disappointment partly because our expectations were so high. I guess we expected that, at night, Café Vue would somehow be transformed into something magical but it, deliberately, stays the same.

The dinner menu is surprisingly limited if you are looking for a big culinary night out but a lot of the daytime dishes are still available. I browsed around and, among other things, had two perfectly cooked Quail Scotch eggs.

Among the $30 main courses are dishes like roasted flathead with nettles and caper anchovy sauce, suckling pig and chicken in a bag.

One drawback is that they take no bookings except for parties of eight or more (under Marie’ Antoinette’s  garment frame) but that may change on Friday and Saturday nights. Otherwise you may get stuck on one of several communal tables.

Don’t get me wrong. Part of my new view from my apartment balcony is Café Vue. And it’s a much-welcomed addition to the Boulevard.

And Shannon Bennett’s next  venture? He’s negotiating to take over the Observation Deck floor at the Rialto. If he pulls that off he’ll have a  restaurant and a Vue to remember.

24th October 2009