When the community is polled on the issue of what professions they trust, the media and journalists usually rank somewhere at the bottom of the table. But pollsters obviously haven’t been asking Vue de Monde’s chef/owner, Shannon Bennett.

“I love the media aspect of the industry,” says 29-year-old Bennett, the chef with the surfie looks and former Neighbours star girlfriend. “I’ve got a huge amount of respect for it and I love what it has done for our industry. It has made so many people aware and it has given so much respect to our industry.”

Knowing that his 60-seat Vue de Monde restaurant must be filled nine services a week to be viable, Bennett recognises the importance of the media’s role in building his business. To that end he’s employed marketing manager, Anna Curry. A former cook and front of house specialist, Curry handles the flurry of media attention that Bennett’s rising star attracts.

“There were so many demands in the last three years; they really steamrolled. People were ringing me up and asking me to fly to Hong Kong to do promotions or asking me to do a book or write in magazines. I needed a role for someone to handle it, someone who understood what I was about.”

In early 2005, Bennett moved his successful French-style restaurant, Vue de Monde, from the Melbourne suburb of Carlton to the CBD’s Normanby Chambers. The move has taken the restaurant further upmarket, an echelon in which Bennett wants to excel. He has invested more than $1 million on the fit out, which includes floors and two tables constructed from wood from the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s recently demolished Ponsford Stand.

“I just wanted to create something that leaves a little bit of history from the Ponsford Stand and at the same time create something contemporary. It adds another dimension to the restaurant and ties in with the restaurant being in Melbourne.”

The Ponsford floors and tables, the individually crafted cutlery, the historic building in which the restaurant is housed: Bennett is making it clear that he is out to lift the profile of fine dining in Australia’s second largest city. But despite his own growing profile – he was even photographed for the cover of Melbourne magazine with his face covered in flour – Bennett doesn’t see himself as a celebrity chef.

“You have to be moulded in a way to where people identify you as a well known person so therefore you qualify as a celebrity, [but] everything I do is for the reputation of Vue de Monde. [I’m] trying to create a reputation where Vue De Monde is an exclusive restaurant, where we love to provide an experience you can’t reproduce at home.”

Bennett, who has said there is good money in restaurants if you’re smart enough, is managed by Melbourne promoter and television producer, Gavan Disney. Disney also oversaw the development of celebrity chef Ian Hewitson and his stamp is across Bennett’s media profile. All of Bennett’s promotional activity outside Vue de Monde, from the website to Bennett’s beautifully produced book, My Vue, says class.

“When you finish work at night at 11.00 pm you’ve just got so much energy. You’re on a buzz, so there’s no better way to finish the night than by writing,” says Bennett, who plans to finish his second book by the end of the year. “When you read those words the next day they have so much energy in them and I love that.”

And Bennett has plenty to write about. After apprenticing as a 15-year-old at Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt, Bennett worked overseas under chefs that he admired and wanted to model his career on: three-star Michelin chef Marco Pierre White (Oakroom, London), John Burton Race (L'Ortolan, Berkshire), Alain Ducasse (Hotel de Paris), and a pastry apprenticeship under Michel and Albert Roux (now at Le Gavroche, London). Bennett returned to Australia in 2000 and opened Vue de Monde in Carlton, wowing critics and diners alike with his energetic take on classic French cuisine.

“I love paying homage to the classical cuisine the French invented a long time ago, but I like to transform it in a way which is very modern and suits our lifestyle – and suits our [his kitchen team’s] job satisfaction,” he says. “We get to create new ideas and use the skill that we’ve picked up so that’s what I class our cuisine as: classical food presented in a very contemporary way.”

Bennett is renowned for his degustation-based approach to evening dining. There are no menus – you come for Bennett’s cooking and he gives it to you, all in front of your eyes in a kitchen that functions like a mini-theatre. While dinner dishes remain a mystery, lunch includes the likes of baked scallop with fresh garden pea puree and a bouillabaisse sauce, and braised pig cheek in spices, sweet and sour carrots and apple mousseline.

As you’d expect, Vue de Monde’s wine list has a strong French flavour, but Australian wines also feature prominently. Bennett says he works with a select group of suppliers whose commitment to quality he trusts, but he’s always on the look out for new products.

“A good example was snails up in the Hunter Valley,” Bennett says. “Sonya Begg, who is doing snails up there, gave us a call off the bat and said, ‘I’m doing these snails, I thought you might be interested.’ She sent us down a sample, and her commitment to quality and her story on the phone and her enthusiasm saw us start using her snails.”

Bennett says there is a certain pressure for him to use Australian products, but his commitment to quality means he only considers produce that is the best, no matter where it comes from.

“We have about 36 suppliers at the moment, but we’re always on the hunt for more,” he says, adding that the restaurant gets along “famously” with a group of winemakers that share his philosophy. “They believe that what they like, other people would like.”

Bennett works hard with the wine industry and one of his chief concerns at the moment is to find Australian products that are similar in taste profile to late harvest white aromatic wines (Gewuztraminer, Pinot Gris) from Alsace.

“That’s one of the greatest challenges facing us at the moment,” Bennett says. “A lot of the winemakers are open to feedback. Obviously, a lot of them have more expertise in the area than we do and say, look, we can’t produce that certain wine that can be produced overseas. But we aren’t asking them to copy the wine, we’re asking them to find a local alternative.”

Bennett is meticulous about food and wine matching, a factor he says is often overlooked in high end dining, even in Europe.

“Food and wine matching shows great respect to the winery and the winemaker,” Bennett says. “I just love when the whole restaurant takes over, matches a glass of wine with each course – I don’t care how many courses, just cook me what you want the restaurant to be and a lot of the time I find that restaurants don’t have a philosophy of matching a particular glass of wine with each course.”

He says getting the food/wine balance right is one of the biggest challenges faced by any restaurant team. He says it’s easy to design a dish with numerous flavours in it, but then it won’t match with wine.

“And that’s one of the areas where it brings the whole community together, wherever you are. For instance, in Melbourne we’ve got some great wineries around here and building them into your package and what you do takes a little bit more thought and creativity.”

Shannon Seeks

• enthusiasm in suppliers
• aromatic Australian whites
• wines for food matching