‘Get behind those two rough ones there,’ says Nevio, pointing at a couple of his giggling friends forming part of the long, winding queue outside his restaurant, E.Pellicci, in Bethnal Green. In the line I meet travellers from Cambridge to Calabria, all here to visit the family-run institution that’s been serving breakfast and lunch to east Londoners for almost 125 years. ‘Little Rosa’, one of Nevio’s employees, beckons me inside the Art Deco wood-panelled room, adorned with portraits of ancestors of the family stretching back generations. She’s learnt it’s one of the Calabrians’ birthdays and, with a large serving spoon, bangs the beat of the tune on the steel sideboard that’s barely taller than she is. The whole café erupts in song before Anna, Nevio’s sister and co-owner, bundles over to take my order.

It’s no wonder the place has survived for well over a century. From the merchandise covering the restaurant’s walls to its extensive online presence, Pellicci’s is no run-of-the-mill family business and is clearly alive to opportunity. But that does nothing to take away from the charm of the place, which, despite feeling like a bastion of the old East End, has evolved over the decades. Nevio and Anna would no doubt baulk at labelling it simply a greasy spoon; their ‘Mama,’ who runs the kitchen at the back, started cooking copious plates of spaghetti, lasagne, and cannelloni decades ago. This is an Italian restaurant, albeit one that cooks vast quantities of sausages, bacon, and bubble and squeak.

Sitting under the pass, I witness these plates barrel over my head, tucking into a peerless example of a full English as Anna and Nevio rotate around the caff. Not a table is walked past without an anecdote or little bit being performed. This is theatre – commedia d’elle arte, at its finest. But if all of Pellicci’s is a stage, its people are not merely players; not only is the food exceptional, but without a word, the dirty saucer I’d spilt tea into is replaced, a pot of Mama’s’ homemade pesto is supplied, and I’m sent home with a slice of her freshly made jam tart. As I leave Anna tells me, ‘She was 84 two Sundays ago, she’s getting fuckin’ lazy; only works seven hours a day now.’

Often those mourning the loss of the traditional breakfast caff to the gain of the ‘avo and sourdough’ lot are also the kind of people who complain about beer ‘not being what it used to be’, the demise of 15-round boxing and the introduction of female football commentators. Bores, essentially. But Pellicci’s is more than a standard British caff. Sitting alongside regulars who’ve been coming for the last 50 years as well as tourists from far and wide, I realised E.Pellicci’s strength lies not only in its history and being an indelible landmark of east London, but in being as fundamentally cosmopolitan as it is unique. That – and its unique ability to serve a damn good breakfast with a slice of Italian-meets-cockney theatre. Well worth the queue.