Cafe Vue Times

HA! I bet you all thought I had carried out my threat of early February and had literally died from rage at Slumdog Millionaire winning all those damn Oscars. Well, it was a close call, but I graciously decided that I should continue living out of spite (I am a generous soul). Quick Oscars hash-up for those who didn’t read all the reports last week: I thought my love of Penelope Cruz had peaked at dizzying levels when she won best supporting actress, but it actually reached truly mountainous proportions at her incredulous raised eyebrow and eye-roll combo directly after the appalling ”The musical is back!” number; Sean Penn robbed the world of the greatest Oscars acceptance speech ever, cos you know that if Mickey Rourke had won he would have dedicated it to his recently deceased dog, and that would have been The Greatest Thing Ever; I want Tina Fey to be my new best friend (“Oh Steve, let’s not bother people with our religion…that we made up…”); Where was Jack Nicholson? He’s always there in the front row of the auditorium, sunglasses on and when panned to by cameras is always laughing and saying something like “Oh yeah!” I have an entire Oscars drinking game based around his presence at this thing and he wasn’t there! Causing me to be very sober throughout the telecast! And also I missed Jon Stewart hosting. No offense, Hugh, but…you’re not Jon Stewart.

Anyway, what? Oh yes, this post is meant to be about food! 

So on Friday night Jen took me out on my belated Christmas present outing to Cafe Vue’s Friday night cocktails. HOLY BEEJEEBUS, YOU MUST ALL DO THIS AT LEAST ONCE IT IS WONDERFULLY DECADENT. The dealio is you get five cocktails accompanied by five courses of nibbles, the nibbles of course coming from the Vue de Monde kitchens next door. And compared to a night out at the de Monde side of Vue, the Cafe stylings are practically frugal on the money front, at $75 or so a head.

Ready to hear what we enjoyed? Brace yourselves, the following is classified as Delicious. 

The theme for the cocktails and courses was Roaring Twenties, and oh I totally encourage you to dress up for it. This is dressing-up food, and my only regret that it was far to hot for me to wear my red felt cloche hat in order to really set the atmosphere.

First cocktail was a Twentieth Century. It was lemony. It was chocolatey. It was lemon and chocolate liqueurs together! It seemed A Little Bit Wrong at first sip, yet melded on the tongue into something delightfully pleasant and simultaneously refreshing and warming. It was served with crab and potato ravioli on the proper menu but, a-ha! I am vegetarian and instead received special veggie concoctions: a tent of mozzarella skin decorated with mini grissini sticks, appearing entirely reminiscent of the Cirque de Soleil big top, hiding a herby ricotta centre and dotted with dehydrated olives and tomato shards. It seemed a shame to demolish it, but my tummy obliged me to do just that.

Second course! A mint julep (which is really the only way to enjoy bourbon, otherwise it’s just far too codeifyied in my memory with terrible Year 10 parties, ergh), accompanied with soup served in a champagne glass.  Jen had a mock turtle soup, which I think was made with lamb? I really wasn’t paying attention, I was far too enamoured with my soup, which was a near-clear tomato concoction that was like liquid joy. The presentation was divine: dry ice had been pumped into the glass and entrapped there by a conical biscuit topped with a sculptural piece of pureed tomato.

The next cocktail was called a Bohemian. I don’t remember what was in it apart from maple syrup and bourbon. A LOT of bourbon. It was during the consumption of this beveridge that I became very loud and table-thumpy, and Jen began to dissolve into what would be several fits of giggles. We are not ordinarily that cheap a pair of  drunks, honest. But I do remember ever so clearly what was in the dishes that accompanied these tumblers of pure pancakey bourbon, because it was the best part of the meal for me. A gorgeous mushroom risotto with a generous drizzling of tarragon sauce (TARRAGON! In vegetarian cooking, where it is so very rarely utilised! I fairly swooned, I did). Jen pretty much had to stop me from licking the plate, because apparently this is not the done thing when one is eating fancy. She herself received a pork and bacon floater, a little pie which was served with a test tube of pea soup. I loved the waitress’s advice to poke a hole in the pie and then pour the soup into it, which as she promised resulted in a pie volcano!

Fourth course! Umm…well, let’s blame all the bourbon for my poor memory of this one. The cocktail was a Six-Penny Crank, and I believe it had whisky in it and was very pleasantly soothing after the flavoursome risotto. I wish I did remember what was in it because it’s probably the one I would most like to replicate at home. Served with it was three cheese pieces toothpicked on rye bread with pickles and some kind of relish. This was really the only forgetable dish of the night, then again I don’t particularly like pickles or condiments with my cheese, and I kind of just bolted them down because at this point I was very aware that the food was doing nothing to prevent the alcohol doing its job, and was feebly attempting to stop the inevitable.

Last stop, dessert! A Ramos Gin Fizz was the closing drink, and at first I was all “You’ve mixed cream and egg white with gin? You fiends! That’s a spoiling of good innocent gin that never deserved such a fate!” But I should have been more trusting – it was like a delicious milkshake (I was quite saddened the next day to realise that me and Jen had both been far too gone to start doing ‘I drink your milkshake!’ impressions. An opportunity lost!), topped with a marachino cherry, which really just made my day. Combine that with a chocolate orange mousse and I don’t think you could have found two happier, drink-sodden skillets that night.

So keep cafe vue in mind for a special night out; I doubt you’ll be disappointed. I will warn you though, the food is in small portions and as I mentioned above will not prevent you getting thoroughly sloshed on the strong cocktails, so possibly be prepared to do as me and Jen did afterwards and get yourselves a nice injection of pure potato at Lord of the Fries to soak up your tipsyness (and that last sentence proves succinctly why I don’t eat at these high-end places all the time – class I am not).  

Also, it looks like Michael and Cindy from Where’s the Beef sampled this very menu recently too! You can read their account here: http://herestheveg.blogspot.com/2009/02/february-20-2009-cafe-vue-friday.html