I had lunch at this Edinburgh family-owned 'hidden gem' of a restaurant

That’s the same length of time as a perfect film.

After settling the bill, there will still be time to tramp round the shops or go for a coffee. Dusk will not have fallen.

However, on a recent trip to Edinburgh’s neighbourhood Greek restaurant, Spitaki, which is run by siblings Nina and Clare Williams and their husbands, Christos Bampalis and Davey Hastings, we bedded in for way over that estimate. I don’t know what happened. The service was speedy, we were slo-mo. The Sunday lunch became a blur of lovely leisurely chomping and chat.

If I were them, I would’ve evicted us, but they were very welcoming to our trio, who stayed for a record three-hours-ish. That’s almost the same run time as Oscar winner One Battle After Another.

I’m usually a bit more businesslike. However, along with all the other smiley happy regulars, including a content-looking black dog sleeping under a table, we just didn’t want to ever leave this Smurf blue Canonmills favourite, which is celebrating its tenth birthday. I think I became surgically attached to the cobalt banquette.

Every time one of us made a time-to-leave gesture, like putting one arm of a cardigan on, someone else started picking at the leftovers, or rekindled the conversation.

I blame the gorgeous Greek Margaritas (£9), with brandy Tsiporou, triple sec, lime juice, and agave. So good that Mexico must be quivering in its boots. They also do a Lemonia (£9), with homemade limoncello, vodka, elderflower and lemon juice, which I have my eye on for next time.

Then there were all the dishes, which came as they’re ready. None a dud.

The pitta breads (£2.50) were doughy and as soft as an earlobe, and we swept them though the cool and smoky melitzanosalata (£5.50) dip of olive-oil-drizzled aubergine, with a little chilli, garlic and parsley.

Everyone dug into the Thessalonian dish of bourgiourti (£7.50), which sounds like a fashion label where the handbags retail for at least £20k, but is actually a dish of baked feta, with dried chilli, a wheel of tomato, onion, green pepper and oregano. It tasted like holidays, and the sort of thing you’d describe in detail on the back of a postcard.

We also tried two fishy options - a large and charred rusty-coloured olive-oiled octopus (£11.50) tentacle, which was draped across the plate like the curlicue on a letter “g”, as well as about a dozen plump prawns (£9) in a sweet saganaki tomato sauce that was injected with ouzo, and more of the cheese of the Gods that is feta.

And there was more cheese - we can’t help ourselves - with the four National-Monument-of-Scotland-column-sized slabs of breadcrumbed cheese saganaki (£6.75) which came alongside a wedge of lemon. We’d also gone for a couple of rounds of the charred and oregano-sprinkled chicken souvlaki (£9.50). They came as sets of two skewers with a few patates and a large scoop of tzatziki.

On the menu, they recommend around three dishes per person here, but our order of seven items was enough to keep us happy, along with a few extra pitta breads and some more carbs in the form of a helping of their crispy crunchy cooper-coloured patates (£6).

We could’ve wrapped up here, and let them turn the table, but we ended up with a digestif shot of mastica (£3.95) each, and I thought, I really should order a bottle of this for the cupboard, because I love it so.

Then, oops, there were still two puddings to share. I took my jacket back off again.

My favourite of the duo was the brick of portokalopita (£6) that was heavily saturated, like a florist's oasis, with orange syrup and came with a generous scoop of S Luca’s vanilla ice-cream. However, we also had a large triangle of pistachio-sprinkled baklava (£6), because it’s as essentially Greek as factor 50 sunscreen.

To be honest, we could’ve kept going and maybe stayed for dinner, too. In fact, why don’t we just move in?

I’d be quite happy to make a permanent nest on that padded blue banquette.

Or, at the very least, spend all my Sunday afternoons here, drinking Greek margaritas, eating octopus and chatting for epic lengths of time.

Spitaki, 133-135 East Claremont Street, Edinburgh (0131 556 9423, www.spitaki.co.uk)

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