Visit
Getting here, and settling in
Trams, trains and bikes, the honest truth about parking, and the house view on prams, dogs, laptops and the big table.
We are down a lane in Collingwood, on one floor of a knitting mill from the 1930s. There is a roller door and, still, no sign on it—on order since 2022, at this point less an oversight than a personality. Coffee and food are out the front, Tuesday to Sunday, seven till three. Closed Mondays, a decision I made in July and have not regretted once. The studio out the back runs by appointment, arranged separately.
Getting here
The easiest way is the tram. The 86 runs from Bundoora RMIT down to Waterfront City in the Docklands, and the middle of it is the length of Smith Street, which is the line between Fitzroy and Collingwood. Get off around Johnston Street and it is a few minutes’ walk east to the lane.
On the train, Collingwood station is a short walk on the Mernda and Hurstbridge lines. To be pedantic, the station sits just over the boundary in Abbotsford, on Stanton Street by the old town hall. Close enough that nobody minds.
If you ride, the Capital City Trail runs along the river past the Collingwood Children’s Farm and up to Dights Falls, where the Yarra meets the Merri Creek, so the river path is a few minutes’ pedal away, and there are bike hoops on Smith Street. I come in on a bike most mornings, so I will not pretend it is hard.
Parking, honestly
Don’t, if you can help it. This is the inner north, and there is no car park attached to the building—nobody was parking a sedan inside a mill in 1936. The street parking is ticketed and time-limited on the main streets and permit-only on most of the side ones, and the officers who patrol Yarra are excellent at their work. I have watched people collect a fine worth more than their breakfast while they sat inside eating it. Weekends are worse than weekdays. If you must drive, allow more time to find a space than to drink the coffee.
Getting in, and getting around
The entry from the lane is level: no step, no kerb, which in a building this old is luck rather than design. Everything is on the one floor, so there are no stairs between you and the counter, a table or the bathroom. The window tables take a pram without anyone choreographing the aisle around it, and if the layout is against you, ask and I will move furniture.
The floor is concrete and the ceiling is four metres up, which is lovely to look at and unkind to the ears: quiet until about nine, building through the morning, properly loud from half past eleven until around one, calm again by two. For a conversation you can hear, come early.
There is one bathroom, unisex, on the flat and with no step to it. It is a converted old-mill room, so the honest word is roomy rather than fully accessible: the doorway clears a standard wheelchair, but there are no grab rails. There is a fold-down change table on the wall.
Dogs, laptops and the wifi
Dogs are welcome at the tables out in the lane, and there is a water bowl by the door topped up more reliably than some of the water glasses. They cannot come inside. That is the food rules, not me being precious, and the exception is assistance dogs, who are welcome anywhere on the floor, as the law requires and as I would want anyway.
On laptops I have a firm view. Before eleven, please do: take the corner table, order a second coffee, get your work done. After eleven, when the rush arrives and people are waiting in the doorway for a seat, do not nurse one cold long black beside an open spreadsheet for two hours. There is free wifi, password on the board—and yes, it is a separate network from the one the till and the card terminal run on, because I spend two days a week telling other cafés to do exactly that.
Kids, and the big table
Children are welcome and always have been: two high chairs, babycinos, and the pram tables already mentioned. Nobody will look sideways at a bit of noise. The room is louder than your toddler on its worst day.
For groups, I do not take bookings for fewer than six; small tables turn better when they are not held empty. Six or more, ring us—the number is at the foot of the page—and telephone rather than email, because I do not read email during service. The largest single table seats ten along one long piece of timber. Beyond ten you are booking most of the room, which I will happily do on a quiet weekday and politely decline for a Saturday.