Let’s start with the bread. It’s sourdough of a quality that’s hard to find in the city, so how is it here on the tight à la carte menu in a Southern Tablelands village? The answer: the baker used to work at Iggy’s Bread, the best in Sydney.

This surprise find is at the Argyle Inn, originally built in 1875 and sensitively restored two years ago to its former Victorian glory with a contemporary touch, including the hotel rooms upstairs.

Order the antipasti plate and you get that bread again as a raft for the likes of ham hock terrine studded with nubs of foie gras, salmon rillettes and chicken parfait, given acid accent with pickled cauliflower and beetroot.

Chef and co-owner Hugh Wennerbom is the farmer of Holmbrae chickens, served in many of Sydney’s top restaurants, and they often appear here, perhaps roasted and served with sautéed corn and leek. Their eggs enrich the hand-cut pasta that’s served with a ragù of duck, say, or kangaroo tail. Pillowy gnocchi, meanwhile, come with tiny sweet broad beans from the garden beds beyond the courtyard at the back, also home to a large smoker where pork belly, for instance, is rendered near bacon-like and served with magically puffy, crunchy crackling.

Like the menu, wines are as local-leaning as possible, with a strong showing from the Canberra district.

The cracking cooking extends to dessert, a model crème caramel, perhaps, scented with blood orange.

The outstanding kitchen performance is matched on the floor by the patron and his staff alike. Public house hospitality at its finest.