North Laine guide
The city's best coffee run, the record shops that survived, and where to eat between them.
The brief
North Laine is a grid of small shops that refuses to become anything else. Gloucester Road to Sydney Street, Trafalgar Street down to the station — you can do the whole thing in ninety minutes and lose an afternoon doing it.
Coffee
Start at The Flour Pot Bakery for a pastry and a properly pulled flat white. Work north. There is a better coffee every fifty metres, which is a problem worth having.
Where to eat
Hello My Moon for small plates that punch far above the room. Detroit pizza for the walk home. A bao counter for lunch you eat standing up.
The rest
Records on Trafalgar Street, vintage on Sydney Street, a flea market that has been there longer than most of the shops around it. Buy the thing. You will not come back for it.