Pie in the sky: inside Australia’s tallest restaurants
From lift access to overcoming the stigma of food-with-a-view, Sydney’s Infinity by Mark Best and Melbourne’s Vue de Monde can face tall ordersGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailThe Guardian’s journalism is independent.We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.Learn more.Whether you’re a skier or a pantry item, everything arrives at Eagles Nest the same way: via chairlift.Australia’s highest restaurant sits 1,937 metres above sea level in Thredbo, New South Wales, and getting ingredients to this Snowy Mountains site is challenging.
Skiers require priority chairlift access but delicate produce needs timely handling too.“No one likes frozen lettuce,” says the food and beverage manager, Ian Campbell.The Guardian’s journalism is independent.We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.Learn more.
“In good weather, all stock goes up the chair during the day and all garbage comes down the chair after public hours,” he says,A snowcat vehicle is deployed when conditions call for it,Eagles Nest’s pizzeria-style menu pays tribute to Tommy Tomasi, the 99-year-old Italian migrant who founded Thredbo’s Ski Patrol in 1956,Diners often arrive in snow gear, so coffee and hot chocolate are popular,The altitude means water boils at 93.
7C instead of 100C, so the espresso machine extracts coffee at the cooler temperature, a “more gentle” pull that results in better coffee, Campbell believes.“Our boiled eggs take 6% longer to cook,” he says.Elevation impacts food and drink.Water boils at 70C atop Mount Everest, and Charles Darwin learned the ultimate dinner fail in the Andes: potatoes, even left boiling overnight, will remain hard and uncooked at high altitude.Elevation also affects taste: anyone who has endured airline meals knows this.
The saltiness of foods can decrease by up to 30% during a flight, according to research for Germany’s Lufthansa airline.Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning“The lower the altitude you are eating at, the more sensitive you are to taste,” says Dr Evangeline Mantzioris, program director of the nutrition and food sciences degree at the University of South Australia.She says changes start to occur about 1,500m up – enough to affect that margherita slice or coffee sip at Eagles Nest, but not enough to affect the menu at Vue de Monde, on level 55 of Melbourne’s Rialto.From oysters to wine, all Vue de Monde deliveries are sent to the restaurant’s basement, where there’s a prep kitchen, walk-in fridges, two cellars and seafood tanks.“It’s a lot of stuff coming in,” says the executive chef, Hugh Allen.
Everything heads to level 55 via a lift Vue de Monde shares with the building’s tradies.Has this elevator ever broken down? “Many times,” Allen says.Hence plan B: using the diners’ lift.It’s a tricky workaround that involves maintaining the acclaimed restaurant’s veneer of prestige.“We have to do it without guests seeing us bringing up bins, produce, things like that,” he says.
Vue de Monde could trade on cityscape views alone, but the chef says “it’s just a bonus” rather than the focus,Vue de Monde’s original site was a Carlton terrace and the restaurant was more than a decade old when it moved into its current location in 2011, 240m above ground,Allen took over Vue de Monde’s kitchen at 23, after working at Copenhagen’s Noma (ranked as the world’s best restaurant five times),Allen’s culinary style is conveyed by a sculptural avocado and finger lime tart garnished with deeply blue borage flowers, or a clever dish using every part of Western Australian marron: shells flavour stock that’s baked into custard, sauce made from crayfish trimmings, with a marron tail playfully plated on top,“It’s pretty simple, but super tasty,” Allen says.
Compare this to the Summit in Sydney, the world’s biggest revolving restaurant upon opening in 1968.On its 47th-floor location, prawn cocktails were popular and the owner, Oliver Shaul, famously said: “I could buy a new Mercedes every year on the profits from garlic bread alone.” The Summit still spins today, now known as O Bar and Dining.Just blocks away, there’s Sydney Tower – still considered Centrepoint by locals, despite multiple name changes.Infinity by Mark Best opened in mid-August on its 81st floor.
You won’t find garlic bread here but there’s rye and caraway sourdough that takes three days to make.Best says the bread reflects his “Germanic Barossa Valley background”.Sign up to Saved for LaterCatch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tipsafter newsletter promotionIn-house butter requires eight days and cream from The Little Big Dairy Co in Dubbo.Meticulously using all-Australian produce is how the chef hopes to overcome “the higher you are, the worse the food” stigma tall restaurants share.Culinary pedigree gives Infinity a head-start.
It’s Best’s first Sydney venture since closing Marque in 2016: during its 17-year run, he achieved World’s 50 Best Restaurants recognition and the ultimate endorsement from Melbourne-based chef Ben Shewry, who was hit by a bus on his way to Marque, yet turned up for his booking, bloody but early,Best remembers the episode well, down to where Shewry sat,Before this gig, Best had never been up Sydney Tower – despite living in the city for almost 40 years,“I hate gimmicky things,” he says,His wife, Valerie, had to urge him up Paris’s Eiffel Tower.
Infinity updates some Marque classics: there’s Sauternes-style custard with Mount Horrocks Cordon Cut riesling, and oysters with edible shells and “grilled sea foam”.Other dishes are Sydney tributes: dosa with sweetbread-style lion’s mane mushrooms are a hat-tip to Indian breakfasts on Cleveland Street.The restaurant’s sommelier, Polly Mackarel, leans into the lofty location with high-altitude wines on her all-Australian list.She says you know a wine region is special when you “immediately feel a change in atmosphere” there.The wine selection, like the playlist, celebrates female talent.
Has Infinity’s lofty position worked against them yet – say, missing out on talented yet acrophobic staff when recruiting the new team? “They just don’t apply, so it’s self-filtering,” Best says.And the lifts? “If two break down, we’re fine.If three break down, we’re also fine,” he says.“We’ve got food up here for days.” Lee Tran Lam is the host of the Culinary Archive and Should You Really Eat That? podcasts This article was amended on 31 August 2025.
An earlier version incorrectly said Paris’s La Tour d’Argent restaurant was in the Eiffel Tower.This reference has been removed.
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