University Cafe
Pasquale Verrecchia was a ship's carpenter on the Clyde, and the timber panelling he cut for his own cafe in 1918 is still on the walls while his great-great-grandchildren work weekend shifts underneath it.
Why go
Four generations in, the cafe has never moved and the back-row booths still use their original pink tables. Co-owner Americo Verrecchia told the Glasgow Guardian in February 2026 that the ice cream runs on a recipe he dates to roughly the 1920s, and that he, his brother and his father are the only people who know it. About half the staff are family, and even the machines that churn and chill the ice cream come from another family firm that services them. Despite the name there is no connection to the university across the road. Anthony Bourdain filmed here in 2015 and ordered battered fish with cheese and curry sauce, deep-fried haggis and an Irn Bru, an order now printed on the menu with his verdict beside it.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the ice cream, in any of its heritage formats, from a plain wafer up to the double nougat. Glasgowist calls this
probably the best place in Glasgow to order ice cream.
Bourdain's combination is on the menu under his own line,Truly one of life's great pleasures.
21 - Avoid: the back booths if you are tall. They stand bolt upright, and the seat backs are close enough that you feel the person behind you shift.
What locals & experts say
- Glasgow Guardian (February 2026): Americo Verrecchia on lasting a century on a street of chains,
I think we stay afloat because we're original... traditional.
1 - Glasgowist: Paul Trainer on the cabinet of retired ice-cream dishes by the till,
The display is a Glasgow cultural artifact,
in a room he describes as a throwback to the city's first wave of ice cream parlours.2 - Anthony Bourdain (2015): on the haddock,
battered and floating, adrift in a sea of mysterious oil,
recorded by Glasgowist from his Glasgow filming.2 - Local rec: Jeff's save, his note below.
Good to know
- Timing: all day, breakfast onward, and busiest around student lunch. Check the Maps pin for exact hours.
- Booking: walk-in only. It is one small room, so at peak you wait for a booth.
- Getting there: 87 Byres Road at the Partick end, a few minutes from Kelvinhall subway and walkable from the university.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Old school. Ice cream and breakfast. Iconic."
Verdict
listed — Plan around it. A single room from 1918 with its original panelling and tables, run by the fourth generation of the family that built it, serving an ice cream to a recipe three living people know. That last part is a genuine can't-get-it-elsewhere: the mix, the machines and the maintenance all sit inside one family, and Glasgow's Italian-Scottish cafe tradition has been closing shop by shop for decades. It costs almost nothing and the fried food is the city's own dialect, cooked by people who never had to relearn it.