National Geographic Traveller (UK) - Food
Take a trip to Breakfast-makers’ Street
In a cloistered corner of central Istanbul, two small lanes wind together, so narrow that the awnings and bay windows of facing buildings nearly touch each other across the stone pavements. Hardly anyone uses, or even knows, the names of these lanes; instead, they’re collectively referred to as ‘Breakfast-makers’ Street’.
“It’s the only place like this in Istanbul: there are more than 20 establishments here, all serving breakfast all day,” says Cengiz Demir, manager of Çakmak Kahvaltı Salonu.
Breakfast (kahvaltı) is a big deal in Turkey, and Çakmak is where the breakfast explosion in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district began. Before it opened in 2002, the only restaurant in the area serving morning meals was Pando Kaymak, a tiny shop whose late owner, Pandelli Şestakof, taught his trade to the members of the Çakmak family working alongside him.
Hearty meals at reasonable prices brought in students from the city’s universities, and Çakmak’s booming success attracted imitators, until Breakfast-makers’ Street became a destination dining spot for people from across Istanbul and beyond. Among the most popular dishes are kavurmalı yumurta (eggs with braised meat) and menemen (eggs cooked with tomatoes and green peppers) — both served in the scorching-hot metal pans in which they’re cooked — as well as the classic Turkish breakfast plate, an assortment of sweet and savoury bites. The latter is
Cengiz’s pick, and he likes to keep it simple: “Cheese, tomatoes, olives, an egg on the side, maybe some honey and cream,” he says.
More and more restaurants have opened here over the past seven or eight years, with Cafe Faruk and Pişi among the other nowestablished favourites. Some newcomers have added chequered tablecloths, fairy lights and other decorative flourishes, or expanded their menus to include hamburgers and chocolate crepes, in attempts to distinguish themselves, but the classic Turkish breakfast dishes remain the lanes’ raison d’être. This type of clustering harks back to the guild system of the Ottoman Empire, when practitioners of the same trade would be located in the same market or on the same street. Even in today’s Istanbul, there’s still a ‘music street’ lined with instrument-sellers in the Beyoğlu district, and a nearby area that’s packed with purveyors of lights and lighting fixtures of all kinds.
With similar offerings all along the street, quality of ingredients separates the outstanding spots from those that simply soak up the overspill when the weekend queues become too long. At Çakmak, the tulum peyniri (a pungent, crumbly white cheese traditionally aged in a goatskin casing) comes from the eastern province of Erzincan, 600 miles from Istanbul. The restaurant’s honey hails from the same place, while its kaşar, a mild yellow cheese, comes from Kars, near the Turkish-armenian border. “We buy from the same places every year, so the quality stays the same,” Cengiz says with pride. And in fast-changing Istanbul, that’s as comforting as a good breakfast.