Most Italian restaurants are child-friendly in that the Italians love kids and will always welcome them warmly. But Italians also eat at 8.30pm, which means finding somewhere for a British child who wants to eat at 6.30pm is not always easy.

The all-day dining is one of the things that makes Na Cosetta so appealing if you have kids (or have the schedule of a creative and want somewhere to hang out all day with your MacBook.) An added bonus was the toy box full of wooden trains and building blocks that kept the children busy while we sampled the more grown-up sections of the menu (raw fish and seafood and carpaccio of kobi beef). 

Na Cosetta only opened a couple of months ago and is already a buzzing local hotspot. Pigneto, a residential area occupied by young creatives, is not yet on the tourist map – and has a similar vibe to Dalson in London. Na Cosetta is the latest place to cater to the discerning, fun-loving crowd who moved to this eastern suburb lured by cheap rents and then made it their own. They come in the day to drink coffee and eat home-baked pastries while tapping on their keyboards and by night to sample the innovative, deliberately ‘non-Italian’ menu and to listen to live music. 

Although you won’t find any pizza or pasta, we found plenty to please the kids. A particular hit were the ‘potato cups’ – large pots, like those used to  serve mussels, laden with diced fried potatoes mixed with a large variety of other ingredients, from child-friendly bacon and cheese to husband-friendly chicken, curry and lime. The delicious 200gram kobi beef or Italian buffalo burgers also come with the crispest stringy fries that will please the fussiest of eaters. 

Our desserts – mousse and meringue for me and cheesecake for my husband were also suitably sweet and pink to please my daughter – although by this stage she had curled up in one of the big comfy armchairs and gone to sleep!