Silver Lake Los Angeles: Coffee, Vintage & the Creative East Side

Silver Lake is the neighbourhood that defines Los Angeles's creative middle class — the film editors, musicians, ceramicists, chefs, and writers who have made the east side of LA their home since the late 1990s. Centred on two reservoir lakes ringed by a running path, it has the city's best specialty coffee, most interesting independent restaurants, and the independent retail scene that other LA neighbourhoods aspire to.

Sunset Boulevard through Silver Lake is the commercial spine. Intelligentsia Coffee opened its Silver Lake location in 2007 and effectively launched the Los Angeles specialty coffee movement; it remains an excellent cafe in a converted warehouse with a large sunny patio. The restaurants on Sunset and the surrounding streets represent some of LA's most interesting cooking: Sqirl for the breakfast and lunch that people drive across the city for (the ricotta toast and the koshiari are the signature dishes), Pine & Crane for Taiwanese, and Botanica for the California-Mediterranean hybrid that Silver Lake does better than anywhere else.

The reservoir path (2.2 miles around both lakes) is Silver Lake's equivalent of Central Park — where the neighbourhood comes to run, walk dogs, and be seen at sunset. The Micheltorena stairs connecting the flats to the hillside streets are a Silver Lake rite of passage. The Sunset Junction area has the independent bookshops and vintage clothing stores that define the neighbourhood's retail character.

Silver Lake sits between Los Feliz to the north and Echo Park to the south — all three are worth exploring as a connected east-side walking day if you have the energy and the Uber credits.