Kahvaltı

Kahvaltı is the Turkish breakfast, and in a restaurant it means a table covered edge to edge in small plates: white cheese and aged kaşar, olives green and black, tomato and cucumber, honey with a slab of kaymak, jams, butter, sucuk fried with eggs or a pan of menemen, simit or fresh bread, and tea poured without pause from a double kettle. The word means before coffee, which places it as the meal that precedes the first cup of the day. It is eaten at home every morning in a smaller form, but the serpme kahvaltı, the spread, is a weekend institution, a two-hour sitting in a café in Van, on the Bosphorus or in any town with a view. Van, in the east, claims the national title and has a street of breakfast houses to defend it. The dish is the whole table, so it is judged as a whole.