Kevin K.
Yelp
Alright - one of those things you learn from travel is that your assumptions and reality is often shockingly divergent. When I say travel, I don't mean one of those silly package tours offered to Chinese tourists where you take 8 hours to get to a place, 30 minutes to gawk at some tourist trap, another 30 minutes to look at something else, spend the night at some cheap hotel at the suburbs, get the complementary breakfast, gawk at more stuff the next morning, 8 hours back and then call that a successful trip. No, what I mean is that you pull a Mark Twain and go roughing it - 11 hour flight to Istanbul, 30 minutes to jump on the metro to an AirBnB in Fatih, visit the local Dia for groceries, hit the bazaars and merkezi to shop around. Then hit the local lokantasi, kebapci or ristoran for food. You dictate your schedule, realm of interests, and ultimately, preferences in food.
After a few days of travel, you meet a new friend or 2 and make some strident observations, i.e.:
a) Istanbul is a modern European city but with a definite ancient underpinning. Take Galata, for instance - the part of European Istanbul where the young educated moneyed urbanites go for their Espresso coffees and baguettes in the mornings. When the government dug up the area for the M2 metro they kept digging up ancient Byzantine artifacts along the route.
b) The Turks don't smile at strangers. That is not to say that the Turks are not friendly nor hospitable - they are some of the nicest people that you can hope to meet, but they need warm-up time. They are initially suspicious of strangers, which are similar culturally to the Koreans. At most service joints all you can expect are curt prompt responsive service, but smiles are between friends and family only. As my buddy Nacer would have put it - only hookers and weirdos smile at strangers outside.
c) Contrary to popular belief, everyday Turks drink black tea, not coffee. Coffee are imported, while tea is grown on Turkish northern coast in large government plantations. When the Turks lost their empire Ataturk set up tea industries as an exercise in self-sufficiency, and drinking tea became a beloved patriotic norm. When you walk into a shop and negotiate with the shopkeep the social lubricant is a tulip shaped glass of amber-clear tea with a lump of sugar on the side. That is not to say that coffee isn't popular, it is - It's just not as common as tea. After all, the Turkish term for breakfast is kavalte, or "after coffee".
d) The kavalte of choice for Istanbulites depends on their wallet. Workmen prefer Simit (a ring shaped bread topped with sesame similar to a bagel) with spreadable cheese, white collar workers prefer fresh pide (bread) with kaymak (Balkan style clotted cream) and honey, olives, tomatoes and cucumbers on the side, while the more well-to-do will gun for menemen (scrambled eggs with butter, tomatoes and sujuk (spicy lamb sausages) or pastirma (dried cure meats)) at a sit-down cafe.
Okay, so that was about Istanbul. But what about this cafe? The infamous Rotisserie Romados is right around the corner and would steal their business via pasteis sales alone, and yet they survived 4 years - so it has to be pretty good, right? The decor is minimalist and functional, very sleek. The service...well, it's one step better than Simit Sarayi (a well-known Istanbul bakery chain), so it's officious without genuine warmth, so rather Turkish. How about the food?
Well, if you are expecting a loaf with kaymek and honey? Nope. No dairy does kaymek in MTL. Menemen and sujuk? Not on the menu either. You could get very good scrambled eggs with persillade, but that's about it. That leaves us with the Simit. Their Simit is okay, but when measured up against the stuff sold on carts in Istanbul? It feels more like a larger St. Viateur's bagel but minus the honey water dip. It's also not served by itself but on a sandwich. Kind of like a Beauty's special but by way of Galata. The quality of food is solid, but it will not keep you up at night. As for the coffee, that's straight up made with Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi, a famous coffee vendor out at the Egyptian bazaar at Eminonu (right across the Golden Horn from...yep. Galata). Usually done in a cevze, I would not be surprised if they use a Beko machine (Arcelik electric Turkish coffee maker). It's still a decent cuppa, with a certain spiciness to it. Yeah, it probably has a shot of mastic in it.
So yeah, if you want a taste of Istanbul, go to Istanbul (or Simit Sarayi). If you want an idea of what an Istanbul breakfast would be like by way of Galata, well, there you go. It's not bad, not unreasonable and has a modern touch to it. I'll go back again.