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Sometimes, you don’t know you need something until you have it. What could we possibly be missing in Melbourne when it comes to Greek food? We have gyros shops, the family-style restaurants, the delis. We’ve had Greek fine dining, Greek street food and everything in between.

What we haven’t had, until now, is a place that feels as though it might exist in the trendy Athens of today, somewhere that exudes cool and freshness. That’s exactly what Tzaki is bringing to Yarraville – an all-day cafe and no-bookings wine bar that thrums with youthful energy. In the mornings, there are pastries and coffee, and in the evenings a menu of affordable mezze makes for a charming casual dinner.

Tzaki is a tiny slip of a venue, a shopfront wholly taken up with its kitchen/bar and the L-shaped counter that surrounds it. Central to that kitchen is the restaurant’s only cooking method – a large wood-fired oven that pumps out everything from chewy crispy rounds of flatbread ($10) to beautifully charred octopus ($19) and individual feta cheesecakes ($16) – yes, even the delicious cheesecakes are baked to order in the belly of this furnace. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The chef and owner is Alex Xinis, who spent 10 years at Hellenic Republic with George Calombaris, and worked at tavernas and Michelin-starred Funky Gourmet in Athens.

At Tzaki, the chefs work shoulder to shoulder in this tiny open kitchen with a bartender, who makes clever Greek-themed cocktails. The Tzaki martini ($23), for example, is made with a coffee-infused vermouth from Athens and garnished with kalamata olives, while the espresso martini ($23) is made with Metaxa Greek brandy.

To go with your flatbread, you’re going to want a serving of taramasalata ($11), an impossibly silky and tangy version that would sway even the most vehement fish roe sceptic. Cheese saganaki ($12) comes smoky, crisp and smothered in deeply jammy peppered figs.

That interplay of sweet and salty is a menu hallmark – loukaniko, the hearty Greek sausage ($18), arrives on a sizzling platter drizzled with hot honey and walnuts. And that cheesecake, which sits in the wood-fired oven long enough to be speckled with char and molten inside, gets its magic from the interplay of the salty feta that forms its base and the sugar that glazes its surface.

Most of the food is mezze-portioned, but there’s always at least one more substantial protein-based dish, most recently a platter of thinly sliced Pure Black beef ($24), tender and rich, swathed in a tangy mustard sauce and garnished with a fistful of parsley.

The menu here changes often, with Xinis taking his cues from what’s in season and available at the Footscray market. This week you might find a medley of marinated and grilled white and green asparagus ($15) smothered in a hollandaise-like avgolemono sauce. Next week, it’ll be gone – all the more reason to return and see what’s next.

Tzaki is immensely loveable, for so many reasons. The food is fantastic and affordable. The room feels like an instant community, the hip neighbourhood bar with a twist, and a slice of modern Athens right here. Xinis and his team make it their mission to give us a new iteration of Greek culture, a beautifully updated version that we didn’t know we needed until we got a taste.