Sunday's Kitchen & Cafe Vue at Heide

Last weekend in Melbourne was glorious - the sun shone, the weather was warm, and for the first time it felt like spring (even though we are already more than a month into the official season).

Tim and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather to go to Heide Museum of Modern Art at Bulleen. Heide (an abbreviation of Heidelberg, the area where Heide is built) was established by John and Sunday Reed, who were patrons of Australian modern art, and lived a sustainable lifestyle at their property. The Reeds often had luminaries of the Australian art scene stay with them for long periods, and many famous works of art were created there, including 26 out of 27 of Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series.

Heide I is the first house the Reeds lived in on the property, with French provincial touches echoing Sunday's time in France. Here is a view of the lovely gardens at Heide I from the sunroom:



At present, there is an exhibition at Heide I called "Sunday's Kitchen: Living and Working at Heide", which features photos, recipes and artefacts from the life of the Reeds. In the Reeds' kitchen garden, they grew vegetables to sustain them. They also kept cows and hens. It was a simple lifestyle which, although it would have been hard work, sounds idyllic.

Sunday loved cats, and had over 20 Siamese cats in her cattery at the side of Heide I. Evidencing her love of cats are these lovely tiles above the kitchen mantelpiece at Heide I:

The Sunday's Kitchen exhibition includes some of the personal effects of the Reeds, including these kitchen items:

After wandering through Heide's gardens and the art exhibitions in Heide II, the purpose built art gallery in which the Reeds also lived for a time, Tim and I went for a late lunch at Cafe Vue at Heide. Cafe Vue is a member of the Vue de Monde family of restaurants and cafes operated by award-winning chef Shannon Bennett. The cafe uses produce from the kitchen garden at Heide.

Cafe Vue offers a range of simple and relatively inexpensive lunch options, including a $15 lunch box containing a selection of snacks and a dessert (being lemon meringue pie on the day that we were there). The lunch box would be perfect to take away and enjoy in the spacious picnic grounds at Heide.

Here is Tim pondering the menu:

We were seated outside, which was perfect on such a glorious day, with the sun streaming in and a gentle breeze. Each table is adorned by a potted herb - ours was mint.

I ordered the ham and salad sandwich ($9.50):

It comprised lovely bread (the likes of which I have not had before, so I can't tell you what type it was), spread with mayonnaise and encasing leg ham, cucumber, lettuce, bean sprouts and red onion. I was very hungry by the time we had lunch, so this really hit the spot. Tim ordered a turkey baguette (not pictured).

For my beverage, I ordered a freshly squeezed orange juice ($4). It came out in a cute little bottle, complete with paper straw, and had a pleasing foam on top:

The only teensy aberration during our visit was that it took a long time to get glasses for our water, as the cafe had seen a roaring trade with the warm weather, and we had to wait until the glasses had been washed up.

It was so relaxing just sitting back and enjoying the atmoshpere at the cafe that we really didn't want to leave. It was only time pressure to see the remaining exhibitions at Heide II that caused us to reluctantly vacate our comfy chairs.

It was a beautiful yet simple lunch to cap off a glorious, relaxing day.

Cafe Vue
7 Templestowe Road
Bulleen
Phone: 03 9852 2346