Hairy Canary has a tiny shop front that’s easy to miss but once you enter, an atmospheric restaurant stretches out before you and you are welcomed with an affable air by easygoing staff in jeans and collared shirts.

Open for breakfast, lunch, dinner and into the early hours, seven days a week, means Hairy Canary is always lively. During the day it has a relaxed, inner-city café vibe. Newspaper-reading patrons nestle in corners with coffees and groups congregate for long, lazy lunches.

But as night falls it turns into a vibrant and bustling restaurant. If your table’s not ready when you arrive, you can perch at the bar with whatever catches your eye from their selection of local and international beer and wines, or let the bartender personally prepare you a cocktail.

The cuisine is Mediterranean-inspired, the name Hairy Canary paying tribute to the Canary Islands, not the bird. You’ll find things like slow cooked oxtail with pine nuts and parsley, or something more basic but no less delicious like penne with spicy salami and olive ragu. You can also find an array of small plates- chorizo croquettes and saganaki with lemon will tempt you to ruin your appetite before you even get to the mains.