Chef Anthony Bourdain’s order at The University Cafe while filming for his Parts Unknown series in 2015: Fish and chips with cheese and curry sauce, deep fried haggis and a bottle of Irn Bru: “Haddock, battered and floating, adrift in a sea of mysterious oil. The accumulated flavours of many magical things, as it bobs like Noah’s Ark, bringing life in all its infinite variety”.
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The University Cafe is a throwback to the first proliferation of local ice cream parlours across the city. Here since 1918.
The cafe’s enduring appeal is down to an idiosyncratic family fusion of Italian and Glaswegian influences held together in a tiny Art Deco room with slim wood-lined booths and bedecked in kitschy nostalgia.
Students have depended on this place for generations. Sliding into a booth to order their hangover crushing meals like pie, beans and chips or macaroni and chips or half pizza and chips.
Pretty much everything comes with chips. Except maybe the spaghetti Bolognese.
Remember: they’ll make you a mighty fried breakfast when you need one.
Glaswegians of a certain vintage come to the University Cafe to remember date nights of the past or being brought in for a sweet as a kid.
While you will find the building blocks of the Glasgow Diet along with swift delivery of cans of ginger or cups of tea when you visit, above all, this is probably the best place in Glasgow to order ice cream. You might want to move quickly to dessert.
The ice cream itself is smooth and super-sweet. It’s a reminder of a carefree past.
Owner Carlo Verrecchia makes ice cream to an old family recipe that has been passed down through the generations.
It is food to make you feel good and should be enjoyed with abandon. Add ribbons of raspberry sauce.
There’s a cabinet beside the till that shows the classic menu, many of the ice cream dishes have fallen out of fashion. The display is a Glasgow cultural artifact.
You can choose from a normal cone, a straight-forward 99 or opt for the formidable twin double 99 cone impossibly piled with vanilla ice-cream.
Then there’s the heritage options ranging from a wafer (two scoops of ice-cream sandwiched between two thin wafer slices) up to a double nougat (the same as before but with two generous slabs of chocolate nougat added). The banana split sundae is pretty special.
The University Cafe has welcomed generations of Glaswegians happy with a simple, distinctive brand of hospitality that is gloriously dated.
We hope they never change.
The University Cafe, 87 Byres Road, G11 5HN, 0141 339 5217