Parking my trusted metallic steed Roccy in Partick was not easy in working hours, but you should stable yours in the metered bays on Peel Street and stroll back to Brera. 30 minutes on the ticket will suffice.
Brera is a well-worn Scotch/Italian café. The subtly stylish matt grey exterior and big windows don’t boast of its presence on Dumbarton Road. They don’t need to. Inside there are heavy, slightly wonky marble-topped tables and tiled floors. It’s more spacious than it looks. Behind the counter a brick wall with girders and festoon lights might be a design motif in line with current café modernism or might have always been like that. A shelf built onto a road bike displays a random range of euro-wafers and bits, the first of many Italian touches. Eggs and ciabatta are stacked up on the stainless-steel counter in wholesale quantities. Someone has priced the cakes in the display case with a UV marker pen. A friendly, scuffed ambience pervades. It’s not all that tidy but it works.
I received old-school personal service from the owner, a man who looks like he hasn’t taken a day off or even left the premises for a while. He kindly moved me to a better table as a constant stream of OAPs, families with pushchairs, office workers and those young people who seem to be everywhere flooded and ebbed. In Partick 2025 the pink hair, man-buns, piercings and other cultural signifiers which go right over my head are scattered throughout the clientele. But if you somehow managed to remove their phones it could be any time in the last 50 years in Brera.
The coffee is a dark, dark traditional Italian roast and is both retro and very good. The pastrami sandwich is fantastic. Brera is not expensive. You get served fast but you are free to linger in Brera. People you know seem to drop in or be walking by. No-one is going to feel unwelcome here.
Like Partick, Brera is a satisfying medley of past grandeur, urban resilience and cultural renaissance in a recognizably redoubtable Glasgow style. Good grief, I sound a bit like Jonathan Meades. No possibility exists that I could ascend to his level. If only my noggin contained enough brain cells for that. I really must eat more fish.
Brera is just a really pleasing, unpretentious, timeless café.
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