Murtoa's historic Stick Shed hosted a special edition of MasterChef's popular television cooking show on Thursday, July 6.
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About 50 locals met at the Murtoa Railway Hotel to play spot the local as the camera panned across the 25 diners chosen to sample the grain-based three-course meal.
"We had a fantastic night watching MasterChef in the Stick Shed at the hotel," owner Kathy Garth said.
Three contestants, Theo, Brent, and Declan, eagerly vied for a safe spot in the finals at the Service Challenge, filmed in the famous venue.
Each contestant had one course of the three-course dinner to prepare.
The hero of the dish had to be grain grown and once stored in the historic venue.
The age-old game of rock-paper-scissors selected which contestant got the first choice of course and grain.
Brent prepared an entrée of smoked rainbow trout and dahl, and Theo created a main course of slow-roasted lamb shanks in a Moroccan-style stew with chickpeas.
Dessert scored a perfect 10 giving the creator immunity - a pearl barley pudding with a salsa of peaches and plums, a caramel syrup including pearl barley, and some added crunch with roasted barley slivers by Declan, who said when he realised, he had the dessert course, but no idea what to create.
But he remembered the taste of the rice pudding he loved as a child and based his dish on that.
Judges Andy Allen, the late Jock Zonfrillo, and Melissa Leong agreed that the quality of the meals prepared by the three contestants did justice to the iconic surroundings of the only remaining Stick Shed, which was built mainly by hand in wartime to store the surplus of the region's most valuable commodity - grain.
"It was exciting to see what the contestants did with the grains that are the lifeblood of the Wimmera, and it all tasted delicious," Stick Shed Committee Member Mr David Grigg said.
"We were delighted to welcome MasterChef Australia to the Stick Shed and excited to show off the Cathedral of the Wimmera to the show's massive national audience."
The Heritage-listed Stick Shed is 265 metres long, 60 meters wide, and 19 meters high, it is constructed of 560 un-milled mountain ash poles and 150 tonnes of corrugated iron on the roof, and it held 92,500 tonnes of wheat when completed to store surplus grains in 1941.
