With its locally sourced food, Moore Street General is a howling success

With the smell and sound of the sea in the air, the mid-morning queue at Moore Street General is mainly about patting dogs. "You've gotta get here with the dawn if you want a table," says a man in a straw hat tickling a dachshund.

The swell of customers waiting outside this homey, sustainability-focused, wholesome food cafe, opened by Kate Canosa in 2017 and sitting on a tree-lined street up the road from Austinmer Beach, are either holding a dog leash, a beach towel/yoga mat or their own enamelled-tin mug for hot drinks as they wait for a vacant seat or takeaway order. No one is staring into a phone or pecking at a laptop.

The mood inside is similar. Between battered white walls, preserve-lined wooden shelves, still-life paintings, boxed oranges and pastry and cake-filled wood and glass cabinets, a mix of wooden and metal tables and chairs are full of people chatting, reading, eating and looking out at their dogs.

Food comes on a variety of speckled stoneware plates and bowls in sizeable portions. A zucchini and haloumi burger is a luscious bundle of pickled beetroot, crispy, salty cheese, onion jam and a fat vegetable fritter studded with seeds and zucchini.

Equally fine is the Avo's toasted seeded bread bearing lemony avocado chunks, thickly spread hummus, layers of sauerkraut, toasted seeds and fermented chilli with a side of chilli and fennel free-range pork sausage. Hot, silky, tangy and crunchy.

A frozen banana smoothie (all milk varieties available) is lip-smacking alongside a creamy flat white, made with the Single O Killer Bee house coffee and served in a blue paint-licked ceramic cup by Pottery for the Planet, available to buy if you're still sipping on the way out.

Moore Street General is busy but not the area's pace of life, an hour or so south of Sydney on the Coal Coast.

From Stanwell Park to Wollongong, a lot has changed in the past decades; coal mine closures, redevelopment, house prices and shops and restaurants adjusting to a changing demographic.

But Austinmer, and neighbouring seaside suburbs, retain a hidden, villagey feel where the Dions Bus Service still snakes along Lawrence Hardgrave Drive beside pole homes, brick bungalows and the odd (upscaled) fibro coal miner's cottage clinging on between the dark protective escarpment and the Pacific Ocean.

Moore Street General lives up to its name as a store, with housemade meals such as vegetable lasagne and split pea ham soup ready to take home from the freezer.

People come in for a dozen eggs from Kangaroo Valley Pastured Eggs or bread from Millers' Local Bakehouse in Wollongong and Pane Paradiso in Port Kembla.

Shelves carry jars of house-made pickled beetroot, quince paste, peanut butter, rockmelon and ginger jam and pineapple, chilli and coconut chutney.

There's also honey from Austinmer Beekeeper a few streets away and packets of coffee by Illawarra roaster Abstract Coffee. Specials change regularly to suit the locally sourced food and produce and the locals throng here every day.

Out on the footpath, clutching a fig and almond loaf and a dozen eggs, there's still a line-up of locals, all looking for a pat.

First up a yellow labrador, then two pugs followed by a black and white border collie and a poodle.

The low-down

Moore Street General

Where 38 Moore Street, Austinmer, moorestreetgeneral.com.au

Main attraction Wholesome, locally sourced foods served in a pickle and preserve-lined, tile-fronted cafe on a leafy street up the road from Austinmer Beach.

Must-try dish The whopping zucchini and haloumi burger, a fat, lip-smacking bundle of crispy, salty, sweet and fresh garden flavours.

Insta-worthy dish Herby Socca, chickpea flatbread with pickled asparagus, preserved lemon, walnuts, house ricotta, roasted beetroot and herbs.

Drinks Single O coffee $4-$4.50; coffee alternatives (mate/dandy/turmeric latte) $5; Nourish & Nest/TeaEsk teas $5; Loquacious kombucha $6-$16; MSG cold-pressed juices $8; smoothies $7/$8.50

Prices $9-$18

Hours Tue-Sat 6.30am-2.30pm, Sun 7am-2.30pm