Big-flavoured, generously proportioned Chinese served quickly is the modus operandi of Happy Boy, beside a busy road in the inner-city’s Valley. Dining is either on the street-level deck charmingly lit by fairylight-wrapped trees and separated by fold-back windows from the mainly concrete dining room, which is sunken below street level to minimise noise.

The menu is the same for lunch and dinner and smaller dishes – such as salt and pepper quail eggs, Taiwanese fried chicken on a milk bun, roast duck pancakes or prawn and pork wontons in a delicious tongue-tingling sichuan chilli broth – are the prelude to a selection of vegetable, seafood, meat and rice/noodle dishes. Barbecued roast duck is crisp-skinned and cut into chunks and so generous in serving size that it would be enough for two with a side. Salt and pepper prawns are encased in a light crisp batter and the dry fried crisp beans with pork mince and chilli are a highlight.

There’s no dessert, an entirely Australian wine list, with the six by-the-glass options projected on to the back wall, and a craft beer on tap.

Must-eat dish: Barbecued roast duck