According to local lore, Fook Shing was a detective in Central Victoria during the gold rush. At this cosy country pub today, he’d find no crimes against flavour.

Start with perfectly set Chinese egg custard topped with fried blue swimmer crab and XO sauce, finished with spring onions and coriander. Then sleuth out char kwai teow, its smoke-wreathed noodles piled high and charred hard.

The salt in the chilli squid might have had Fook reaching for a Macedon Ranges pinot gris – or his namesake cocktail, the tall and sweet Shing Sling.

Amid this kind of weekend conviviality, he would also be pondering the mango-topped, coconut-soaked tapioca pudding, a beautiful mess of tropical intrigue.