Twenty-five years On and 55 floors above the CBD, Vue de Monde remains the benchmark by which Melbourne fine dining measures itself: theatrical, meticulous, unapologetically expensive, and still capable of genuine surprise.

In our opinion Vue de Monde is the most complete fine-dining experience in Melbourne, and arguably in the country.

There is a particular kind of restaurant that survives its own mythology — that keeps evolving long after the chef whose name built it has walked away — and Vue de Monde is the clearest local example. What began as a quirky French terrace bistro in Carlton in 2000 is now a three hat, multi-course spectacle on the 55th floor of the Rialto Tower, run by a kitchen with no obvious ceiling on ambition and a wine cellar that competes with the best rooms in the world.

When Vue de Monde first made the move to the top of the Rialto building, it was stunning. There was nothing quite like it in Australia. The views, the incredible food, the theatre and pageantry, the service and the cheese trolly (wow). They even gave you a breakfast bag when you left, it was so impressive. Over time the theatre disappeared somewhat, dishes stayed the same and the experience repeated lacked the magic. And while it remained a good restaurant, it was not somewhere you wanted to return.

The new Vue de Monde is not like that at all. The magic is back, the service is exceptional, there is theatre and whimsy and the food changes with the seasons, the exceptional wine list is still there, and they still have the cheese trolly. Yes Vue de Monde is the definition of fine dining.

AMBIENCE >

You arrive by express lift, which is the first hint that this evening is being stage-managed from the moment you step off the street. The room itself, designed by Elenberg Fraser, is built to evoke the Australian landscape rather than European fine-dining convention: a canopy of tiny lights by artist Emma Lashmar hangs above the tables like a swarm of fireflies, chairs are upholstered in kangaroo leather, and salt and pepper are hidden inside carved stone. Then there is the view — the whole of the CBD, the Yarra and Docklands laid out beneath floor-to-ceiling glass, which is reason enough on its own to book a table for sunset.

The room had a $3 million refit in 2023, its “fourth iteration,” reopening with a new fit-out, a new 18-course tasting menu and a refreshed Lui Bar next door for pre-dinner drinks. Service throughout is polished to the point of choreography — sommeliers, food runners and the front-of-house team move with the practised calm of a room that has been doing this, at this level, for two and a half decades.

EAT >

There is only one menu at Vue de Monde now — the Chef’s Tasting Menu, currently priced around $360–380 per person — and everyone at the table partakes. Under executive chef Hugh Allen, a Bennett protégé who spent time at Noma before returning to run this kitchen, the food is unmistakably Australian in ingredient and unmistakably French in technique.

The sequence runs long and is built for surprise: a chilled radish broth of fermented koji, jasmine and raspberry oil to open; a whisper-thin tart of shaved avocado and samphire under a crown of borage flowers; Sydney rock oysters lifted with a fine horseradish powder; an egg-shaped dome of macadamia cream and black caviar resting in kelp oil (exceptional).

Marron tail — grilled and dressed with fried native herb paste and a warm marron roe custard — sits at the centre of the savoury run, followed by ribbons of salt-cured kangaroo studded with green ants over a mushroom-kelp broth, wattleseed damper with cultured butter, and Blackmore wagyu.

A trolley of Australian cheese arrives before dessert, and dessert itself closes on the one dish that has never left the menu in twenty-five years: chocolate soufflé with billy tea ice-cream, a genuinely moving piece of continuity in a menu otherwise built to keep changing. Wattleseed madeleines and a native-flavoured Lamington send you out the door.

It is a lot of food, a lot of theatre, and — inevitably at this price point — not every single course lands with equal force across an 18-plate run. But the hit rate is high, the technique is faultless, and the commitment to native Australian ingredient stories (green ants, wattleseed, macadamia, finger lime, marron, kangaroo) feels considered rather than gimmicky.

DRINK >

The wine list is one of the most serious in the country: roughly 2,000 selections and 7,000 bottles in inventory, run by wine director Dorian Guillon and sommelier Mathieu Gobin, with particular depth in Burgundy, Bordeaux and Australian fine wine. It has earned Vue de Monde a La Liste score of 97.5 points in 2025 and 96 in 2026, placing it consistently among Australia’s most credentialed dining rooms by that measure.

Matched wine packages sit alongside the tasting menu at several tiers, and the team is equally comfortable walking a Burgundy obsessive through obscure vintages or steering a first-timer toward something simple and food-friendly. Rare tea service is also offered as a non-alcoholic alternative for the full course run, a small but thoughtful touch for a menu this long. Pre – or post-dinner drinks at the adjoining Lui Bar — reworked in the same 2023 renovation with a native-ingredient cocktail list — are more than worth the extra hour especially to watch the sunset over the city.

CONCLUSION >

Vue de Monde is expensive, long, and entirely aware of its own reputation — but it earns the indulgence. Twenty-five years on from a small Carlton terrace, it has survived a change of ownership, a change of chef and a full identity reset, and still delivers one of the most complete, technically ambitious dining experiences in the country, with a view no other Melbourne restaurant can match. Book well ahead, clear the evening, and go hungry.

Click on images below to launch the lightbox

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Image Credit | ALMANAK & VUE DE MONDE

---