Room with a Vue...A not so expensive one...

How often do you get to eat out at a really fancy restaurant? Well, if you're like me, maybe once or twice every couple of months. Those places aren't cheap and no matter how good the food is, not many people could afford to eat there every week, let alone every day. That's where Vue De Monde- the plush fine dining restaurant in the middle of the city, had a bright idea. They opened a little cafe just next door to the regular restaurant called Cafe Vue, which doesn't leave you wondering at the end of the month how you're going to pay that credit card bill. In fact the food is quite cheap, the prices generally range between $6 - $10. Cheap enough for us inner city working folk to get some Vue love everyday... If we really wanted to that is.
There aren't many tables at Cafe Vue, just a few inside and a couple outside where the fence between you and the lane way has a grid of herb pots built across it. If you sit outside, you can look through the window and watch the corporate high flyers eating their business lunches in the bigger restaurant.... or are they looking at you....kind of makes me think of that Four n Twenty commercial "i wonder if they know what they're missing out on"....we choose to sit inside.
Cafe Vue mainly does old lunchtime faves, but they do them with the best ingredients. Offerings like Croque Monsieur, the Vue Burger, Baguettes with fillings of ingredients like tomato, basil and buffalo mozzarella or the Club Sandwich. They also offer some new twists on the old lunch time faves, like:a Jaffle with Baked Bean and Duck Confit and Yorkshire pudding with creamy mash and wagyu beef, which is what I ordered.

Now, if you're mega hungry, don't expect to leave here feeling satisfied, because the servings aren't that big, but hey - how much Wagyu do you want for $6? More on that later. The yorkie is as big as my fist, slightly crunchy in parts, and soft and spongey in others. on top of which rests the very creamy and almost cheesy potato puree. Draped over this sculpture of tastiness is the prized Wagyu which is sooo, so tasty and literally falls apart when you pull at it with your wooden disposable utensils. I still wonder though, how do they afford to sell Wagyu beef for $6, is it possibly the offcuts from the good stuff in the restaurant? Last time I checked it sells for approximately $150kg. Oh well, what do I care, whether it's real or not, the meat was gorgeous.
Now, I've been to Cafe Vue before and had the Yorkie, but not presented quite like this. On this occasion, the gravy was served to us in a drug lab type of vial and stuck deeply into the yorkshire pud! As I was unwrapping my wooden utensils, from the napkin, i noticed 2 little deal bags drop onto the table.

Upon further inspection, these contained my salt and pepper! Now, I've heard of some different ways of serving up food, but lunch time food with a druggie twist? Who knew? When we asked the waiter "why the vial?" he simply replied - "it's heroin." Clearly a new way of dealing heroin - over the counter and hidden in a yorkshire pudding disguised as gravy!
Now like I said, the meals aren't that big, so I decided to order myself a Vue De Monde Burger ($10). Again, the burger was about the size of my fist, which was served with French fries and a little cup of sauce. The burger was delicious, soft, perfectly seasoned meat, squashed between two buns with half a small peeled tomato, some cheese and some tasty aioli type sauce.
Cafe Vue has to be one of the best lunch places I've found in the city and by far the best value. Not for the size of the meals, but for the quality of ingredients and the great presentation. I'm looking forward to getting up early enough to drop in for one of their breakfasts too. If it's as good as lunch, then I can't wait to start my day at Cafe Vue. Let's just hope that I don't find a syringe full of honey in my porridge!