University Café

Pasquale Verrecchia, a ship's carpenter off the Clyde, opened the University Café on Byres Road in 1918 and built its interior with his own hands — the timber panelling and art-deco fittings are the founder's carpentry, and they are still in place, still dark and gleaming, a century on. The fourth generation runs it now, co-owner Americo Verrecchia with about half the staff family and his own teenagers on weekends; the café was boarded up during the war when anti-Italian riots smashed its windows, and it reopened and carried on, as it has through everything since. Parliament marked its hundredth birthday with an Early Day Motion in 2018. Fish teas, ice cream, hot peas and vinegar: Glasgow's Italian-Scottish café tradition at its unbroken source.