With its starched linen curtains and pale green paintwork, Ida has the vibe of a provincial Italian restaurant plopped down on a busy North West London road.
Once inside, the cosy neighbourhood eaterie, housed in a Kilburn corner shop, feels like dining in someone's front room - albeit one serving some of the best home made pasta in London.
Beloved by locals around Kilburn, Kensal Rise and Queen's Park, Ida remains a homely beacon on Fifth Avenue and is family run, by husband and wife team, Avi and Simonetta together with their three children.
Back in 2007, the couple's dream was to recreate the kind of simple, home-cooked Italian food you would eat at the house of your favourite aunt.
The only problem was they had three small children, were total amateurs, and the area was "somewhat scruffy".
As Simonetta Wenkert explains in her heartfelt, recipe-packed memoir Ida At My Table, she put her writing career on hold to open the restaurant, named after Avi's Italian mother, whose recipes for pasta, gnocchi and ragu formed their core menu.
They had started doing pop ups in Maida Vale Greek taverna Tsiakkos when they spotted the vacant shop one road up from their house on Galton Street.
Part of the Victorian Queen's Park Estate built as labourers cottages, the Grade II listed building had been a grocers and sweet shop before becoming a cafe.
Simonetta, the daughter of an Italian mother and Austrian-Jewish father, writes it was on "an unlovely arterial road running through the Brent-Westminster boundary. There was no high street and no passing trade unless you included the comings and goings from the crack house across the road.
"The restaurant reeked of desolation and failure, the walls were painted orange and the radiators were picked out in bright turquoise. The previous owners had started off as a Lebanese cafe serving All Day English Breakfast, after less than a year in business they shut down."
Against the odds she pictured it "full of smiling customers enjoying our food, a natural meeting place for local people and their friends," that was "like dining at someone's house."
Re-mortgaging their home, they raised the money to transform Ida's into a haven with old pub chairs from a reclamation yard, wood panelling, a jumble of Italian posters, and white tablecloths.
Although the locals quickly took their food to heart, Simonetta describes her guilt at spending every waking hour in the restaurant instead of with her young family.
In those early years they fell victim to scammers, break-ins, drunken customers, and temperamental chefs including one who refusing to cook their 'nonna' recipes.
Then came recession when "bookings fell off a cliff" and they were forced to choose between selling their home and the restaurant.
"Opening a restaurant had almost broken us yet still I couldn't face the idea of walking away."
Heartbroken but single minded about getting Ida back on its feet, they oversaw a turnaround that saw them being listed in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Conde Nast Traveller's lists of best Italian in London and being booked for photo and film shoots for the likes of Call The Midwife.
Famous guests who dined there include Jimmy Page, Lily Allen, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Guy Garvey and for three nights in a row all four members of U2.
But it was Prince Harry and Meghan Markle who "went through a phase of dining with us before their move to California" and Cillian Murphy who caused the biggest stir among the regulars.
During the pandemic, Simonetta started cooking community meals for vulnerable residents, and the children of keyworkers from donated food, and the restaurant pivoted to run a take-away deli.
Her Instagram post about missing the restaurant was met with warm messages from loyal customers, as the 59-year-old writes: "It was the outpouring of solidarity from our customers culminating in a pay it forward crowdfunder which raised an astonishing £26,000 in 72 hours that made me understand the communality of a neighbourhood restaurant."
Ida continues to specialise in fresh pasta and gnocchi, made in-house every day, as well as regional vegetarian, vegan and fish dishes.
They are inspired by Ida a fastidious and refined cook who was born in the medieval hilltop town of Cupramontana and "could hold a twenty year grudge because a fruittivendolo in Rome once tucked a bruised peach into her shopping".
She moved to Israel in 1952, but her encyclopaedic knowledge of regional Italian cuisine, always championing simplicity over fussiness and fashion, lives on in dishes like Tagliatelle al ragù marchigiano, polpette in bianco, pasta with nettles and egg yolk, and Vincisgrassi - all recipes which can be found in the book.
"Because of her I learned it was never 'just' food, I too learned to cook with love."
Ida at My Table: A Story of Family, Food and Finding Home is published by Bedford Square price £20.
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