The Bread Mobile is a bakery at 61 Albert Street in Whitianga, on the Coromandel, and it holds a five-star Google rating.
Bakeries run to the clock: dough is proved overnight and baked in batches through the morning, so the shelves at nine look nothing like the shelves at two. That is why regulars go early, and why asking what has just come out of the oven beats hunting for a favourite. A good loaf announces itself, too: a crust that cracks when you squeeze it and a crumb full of uneven holes rather than a uniform squish. In a summer holiday town, when the queues stretch out the door by mid-morning, the seasoned move is to arrive early or be content with whatever is left.
In Whitianga, a town that swells each summer, a five-star bakery on Albert Street is exactly the kind of local knowledge worth having.