Old crockery.

If you were in Bourke Street about half past eleven in the morning, and you hadn't had coffee (what have you been doing all morning?), why wouldn't you stroll up the hill, past the cinemas, past the Southern Cross redevelopment that is taking forever, past the Hill of Content bookshop, past the magnificent and expensive Florentino and past the magnificent and inexpensive Florentino Grill to the little cafe bar on the corner with the red and green flashing neon light that reads: Open 8 a.m. ? Well, of course, you would.

As we did.

We sat up at the bar at the window end of Pellegrini's where the counter curves right around the coffee machine - the one that has probably made more cups of coffee than any other machine in Melbourne - and parked William, in his pram, so that he could look out through the glass into Bourke Street.

In the fifties and sixties, my father sold crockery to Pellegrini's and Melbourne's other grand old cafes and restaurants - the Latin, the Society, Mario's, Virgona's, and here, you can eat off some of the originals.

The food is similarly dated. But it's magnificent. Steaming bowls piled high with pastas that are barely remembered in more contemporary places. Who serves spaghetti saltati any more?

You order to the guy behind the bar and he relays the order to the kitchen at the rear by speaking into a little bakelite radio unit - probably original - at the bar near the coffee machine. He shouts the order at the top of his voice. Why does he need the radio? I don't know. Sometimes the cook shouts back, not using her radio. He hears her fine.

We shared a minestrone and the aforementioned spaghetti saltati. Both were accompanied with a doorstop of crusty, delicious, chewy Italian bread. Perfect for dipping in the soup and wiping up the sauce of the pasta. Which we did. Because it's that kind of place. The spaghetti saltati serving was big enough to feed a starving tiger, if tigers ate pasta.

On a sideboard behind the bar, there's a spread of Italian home-style salads and antipasto things and, behind that, a shelf of cakes, baked apple cakes, creme caramels, chocolate this and that.

Ah, but the coffee. In the morning you can just order a cheese roll and it's fat and buttered and stuffed with several slices of delicious fresh cheese, sometimes a provolone dolce if you're lucky. The guy shouts into the radio panino formaggio and the cook from the kitchen brings it out and she slams it - nicely - on the counter in front of you and the bar guy slams down your coffee - nicely - next to it and it's the best breakfast you've eaten for a long while.

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Oh - then we went shopping.