Turkish Breakfast Board

Where the Ottoman Breakfast Feast is a communal event, the Turkish Breakfast Board is a single-serving version of the same philosophy: a little of everything that makes a Turkish morning great. It is the format you find in every neighbourhood café in Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir — a wooden board or a cluster of small dishes that arrives looking impossibly generous for one person.

The board format became popular in Turkish café culture in the 1990s and 2000s as the country urbanised rapidly and the long family breakfast moved from the home to neighbourhood cafés. The challenge for any café is curating the right balance — enough variety to feel festive, enough focus to feel considered. The warm egg dish is the anchor, everything else radiates around it.

You choose your warm anchor: sucuk & eggs, menemen, or kuymak. Around it we arrange black and green olives, feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, jam, honey and butter, four Turkish breads, and two cheese börek rolls. A glass of Turkish tea completes the ritual.