CAFE VUE AT HEIDE

Café Vue At Heide:

7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen VIC

(03) 9852 2346 or www.heide.com.au/heide_cafe

At the opening of Café Vue at the Heide Modern Museum of Art in Melbourne, Minister of for the Arts, Lynne Kosky, pronounced chef/owner Shannon Bennett an “artist in the true sense of the word”. Kosky may well have been referring to Bennett’s best known work of art Vue de Monde, the café’s fine dining namesake, but the fact she was delivering her oration at Heide gave the observation extra pathos. That’s right, one of Melbourne’s finest chefs has struck up an alliance with the Modern Museum. It’s a big win for The Arts. And it’s a win for Bennett too. After years of trying to goad his body corporate into letting him plant alfalfa on the Vue de Monde tenancy roof, he finally has a garden to play with at Heide. The Heide green thumbs are all too happy to have produce from the onsite Sunday Reed’s Vegetable Garden whipped up into some fancy nosh for visitors to the Museum. And it means that all the waste will go straight into the on-site composting system and right back into the garden beds to help fertilise a new batch of tasty vegies. The building is designed by Chris Connell around the existing carport structure and is the sort of minimal glasshouse that suits Heide II’s modernist aesthetic. But the star will be Bennett’s cooking as the café side of his brand continues to expand and spread that Vue taste further and wider. [Photo: Jim Lee]