Try a traditional Turkish breakfast spread

“We started our kahvaltı the Turkish wa y, with aromatic, black cay (tea) before diving into our breakfast feast. Four types of cheese were set out in rustic platters alongside olives, sun-ripened tomatoes, crisp cucumber and baskets of freshly baked bread, warm and recently retrieved from the nearby wood oven. Menemen, a dish similar to omelette still simmered in its pottery platter. Made with onions softened in oil, stewed tomatoes and peppers with eggs scrambled in at the end the menemen had been cooked on the wood fire until just set and was served piping hot and delicious. Home-made fig, apricot and walnut preserves sat side-by-side with creamy yoghurt and honeycomb dripping with golden sweetness. Grapes, melon and apricots rounded off the feast. And, of course, Turkish coffee. We relaxed for over an hour beneath the shade of the trees surrounded by the strange volcanic rock shapes and vines hung heavy with dark velvety grapes. The chat was easy and the food divine. Two women from the village, who’d carefully prepared the food, plied us with seconds and topped up the platters until we were full to bursting. We finished with good, hot Turkish coffee.”

“The other thing that places the kahvalti at Çesme a notch above other restaurants is the fact that the food just keeps coming. You can basically have unlimited refills of everything on your breakfast table - you don't even have to ask! A lovely bearded waiter kept bringing us various breads and at one point I placed a hand over my plate and said, "I am sorry, I just can't eat any more." He looked at me with a sad face and replied, "But my mother is making the breads. Do you want me to go and tell her that you don't like them?". And so I capitulated, despite being full to bursting, and found a place in my stomach for even more gözleme because I didn't want to upset this man's mother.”