What Gelato Messina is serving at the 2016 Night Noodle Markets

Expect the best kind of lucky dip at Melbourne's Night Noodle Markets - Gelato Messina will present surprises topped with caramelised puff pastry, drizzled with passionfruit caramel or tucked inside a green tea waffle cone.

The gelateria is setting up its Very Very Good Lucky Fortune Bar daily from November 10-27 at Birrarung Marr. It double downs on last year's Lucky Fortune Bar - where the highlight was "hearing our customers order a Bao Chicka Bao Bao every minute," says head chef Donato Toce. (It was a deep-fried peanut gelato bao, dunked in milk chocolate and crusted with crushed peanuts - so apologies if you missed out on it.)

So here's why you should make your way through the crowds to this year's Very Very Good Lucky Fortune Bar: it offers the trademark wisecracking Messina puns packaged with the gelateria's impressively OTT dessert approach.

"We wanted to create four dishes that took our customers on a wild journey through Asia," says Toce. "Covering everywhere from Japan, The Philippines, China and Thailand, they've been created to be particularly texturally pleasing. There are lots of surprises inside."

Matcha Do About Nothing cloaks a milk choc and green tea chocolate gelato under white chocolate and pistachio crunch, all in a waffle cone that would've won over Shakespeare, if the playwright had been a matcha nerd. (He probably would've been green-tea-dependent, if he was busy inventing 1700 words and being a general overachiever.)

Only On Sundaes (someone please serve this to politicians who want to cut penalty rates?) is a tropical jackpot of salted coconut sorbet with sticky black rice, lychee tapioca, a theatrical sail of caramelised puff pastry and finishing touches of lemongrass and white chocolate ganache.

​You don't have to be an opera-goer to be into the Turron Not (its headlining star is a filo-wrapped package of deep-fried banana and brown sugar gelato, backed by a supporting cast of ube cream, kalamansi puree and coconut crunch) or a Game of Thrones tragic to be keen on Fryer and Ice (mango pudding and passionfruit caramel with a dragon-free deep-fried caramel and coconut gelato).

These two desserts were as tricky to pull off as a big production.

"We love to offer a 'made to order' deep fried option - there's nothing more satisfying than tucking into a warm crunchy pastry to reveal a cold oozy gelato centre," says Toce. "The Fryer and Ice and Turron Not were the most challenging but the most fun to create. It takes a lot of trial and error to balance the coating and the internal temperature and structure of the gelato inside - but we got there in the end!"

Melburnians have the good fortune of being able to try these lucky experiments, as the Night Noodle Markets opens on Thursday. Enjoy the gelato windfall.

November 10-27, Mon-Tue 5pm-9pm; Wed 5pm-10pm; Thu-Fri 5pm-11pm; Sat 4pm-10pm; Sun 4pm-9pm

Melbourne Night Noodle Markets, Birrarung Marr, goodfoodmonth.com/melbourne