From an unassuming shop front in a business centre in the heart of Gisborne—the gateway to the Macedon Ranges in Victoria—Stephanie Zhou and her husband, Stephen Rocard, run an Asian fusion eatery with a difference. Positioned about 50 kilometres from Melbourne and 100 kilometres from Bendigo on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country, The Flying Pigeon offers homestyle cooking with a range of international influences, generously catering for all dietary requirements.
Stephanie grew up in southern China, and met her Australian-born husband in Beijing, where the two of them sold custom-designed, screen-printed t-shirts, and ran a successful cocktail and pizza bar. “My dream was always to have a spot where you can do your shopping, you can sit down and have something to drink, and something to eat,” Stephanie says. “So, a one-stop shop.”
When they moved to Stephen’s homeland of regional Victoria in 2013, they wanted to continue to use their hospitality skills. “We’re not, by any means, professionally trained chefs,” Stephanie explains. “We just have a passion for it.” Influenced by hip Melbourne venues Chin Chin, Lucy Liu and Supernormal, Stephanie and Stephen decided to offer regional folks a taste of authentic Asian fare, a far cry from the lemon chicken and sweet and sour pork most country folk are familiar with. “We thought people in [the Macedon Ranges] have to travel all the way into the city to get this sort of cuisine, why don’t we set something up in Gisborne?” Stephanie says. And so in 2015, The Flying Pigeon restaurant and bar flew into town.

Stephanie says the ethos of the restaurant is to introduce punters to new flavours, to work with the freshest local ingredients, and to offer a majority of dishes that are allergen-free and intolerance-friendly. “We want to share our passion with people, we try to tell stories with the food,” Stephanie says. “And then we listen—we changed our menu to make it very inclusive, I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re still here after nine years.”
With the house specialty of handmade dumplings leading diners into the succulent menu, an array of dishes from various corners of Asia follows—including Korean kimchi, Chinese Yuxiang eggplant, Cantonese style barbecue pork, Malaysian yellow curry and Indian chicken masala. Evidence of how closely the restaurant is aligned with its fellow Macedon Ranges small business-owners can be seen, with Gisborne local Millet Road Maker’s sourdough crumpets featuring in the dessert menu, and a carefully curated selection of regional wines on offer. “We try to get as many local ingredients as possible,” Stephanie says. “We get produce from farmer’s markets, and we make a lot of things from scratch with fresh ingredients, and that’s what makes food very good.”
Stephanie believes good food has healing properties. “I know myself when I have had a terrible day, I sit down and I have something to eat, good food, it makes you feel so much better… it doesn’t have to look fancy, it’s the flavour, it’s how it’s done,” she says. She’s honoured this sentiment is being reflected back in the feedback she receives. “People say [our food] heals their soul. It’s the best thing anyone could say to you.”

The community spirit of the restaurant shows through in Stephanie’s attitude to hiring young staff, and she’s passionate about giving many of the local kids their first job opportunity. “Everyone has to learn, everyone needs to start somewhere,” she says. “A lot of them stick around for quite a long time, you see them grow, it’s amazing.”
Although The Flying Pigeon is now a much-loved stalwart of the town, introducing regional folks to Asian food in a format they were unfamiliar with wasn’t easy at first. “The first two or three years it was hard… we had teething problems,” Stephanie remembers. “But three or four years later we finally got a lot of recognition, and people started to understand [what we were doing]. It never crossed our minds that we wanted to shut the restaurant, but there were a lot of tears.”
Despite their background hustling in the bright lights of big cities like Beijing, it seems Stephanie and Stephen have found a permanent place to roost in Gisborne with The Flying Pigeon, and say running a restaurant in a regional town is different from being city-based. “I’ve found people are very nice here — compared to Melbourne, people are very friendly, they will check up on you, they’ll ask if you need help,” Stephanie says. “In a little community, you see what the people are doing for each other, and this is a feeling I would never have if I lived in the city.”
The Specifics
What: The Flying Pigeon
Where: Nexus Centre, 7/13 Goode Street, Gisborne, Victoria
Opening hours: Dinner, 5.30-8.30pm, Tuesday to Saturday
For more information, head to the Flying Pigeon website.
Stephanie runs regular dumpling-making workshops at the restaurant, check their Facebook page for details.