Just under a kilometre from the centre of town, away from the tourist restaurants and their picture menus, there are a clutch of tavernas on the main road. Slightly cheaper than the main drag, the food is definitely not of the "calamari and chips" variety, and there are no waiters hovering outside waiting to hustle you in. The Pytharka is decorated in traditional style, with big windows that open up onto the terrace (unfortunately facing directly onto the main road) in the summer. Open seven days, on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sunday nights there is live traditional music. The taverna is family run, with Chara in charge of the kitchen, and Andy in front of house (and occasionally singing with the band). Most of Chara’s recipes were passed down from her grandmother, and it is the simplicity of the cooking that is its strength.

What’s available depends very much upon what’s in season at the market, but some classic bean dishes such as louvi me lahana (black-eyed beans with chard), and fasoulaki (French beans cooked in red wine, with or without lamb) are standards. We popped in for lunch one day, and the simple but very fresh food, and Chara’s enthusiasm for her traditional cooking, tempted us back for the "traditional" meze a few nights later. A litre of house red (£7) was accompanied by traditional "nibbles" of cheese, smoked ham and smoked lamb. You can get a grill meze at the Pytharka featuring all the usual suspects, and you can also opt out of the meze and have the usual selection of meats from the grill, as well as some of the vegetarian dishes I had tried for lunch. But we went for the "traditional" version of the meze at £8.50.

A meze for two can be overwhelming, but at the Pytharka, the portions were just right. Along with the home-made bread and the usual selection of appetisers, we had a potato salad dressed with lemon and herbs, another mashed potato dish with garlic, hot grilled black olives, carrot salad and a kohlrabi salad. And then came spare ribs, village sausage and sheftalia. And then there were dolmades and keftedes, kolokassi in tomato sauce, two or three aubergine dishes, Lefkara lamb, another baked lamb dish, village macaroni, spinach with cheese, snails, roast potatoes (a welcome change from chips) – and a lot more. The variety of tastes and flavourings, the combination of baked and grilled food, and the concentration of vegetable dishes, made the meal delicious rather than the epic of endurance that a grill meze often is. We even managed the fruit accompanied by small pastry parcels stuffed with apple and cinnamon that made up dessert. Everything was home made, and the dishes came at a leisurely pace, and service was attentive without being intrusive. The Pytharka is that unusual thing in the centre of Larnaka, a real traditional taverna serving authentic local food.