From far left: chef Fatih Tutak at work at his restaurant, Turk; beef short-rib with smokedtomato glaze and Denizli pepper at The Peninsula’s Gallada restaurant; the can’t-beat views from Biz’s open-air terrace There is a nutty scent of toasted sesame that hangs in the air in early-morning Istanbul, often mingling with the warm, rich fragrance of roasting coffee. It comes from simit, a ring-shaped bread, its dough twisted and scattered with sesame seeds, then burnished to a chestnut brown in bread ovens across the city. Sold by bakeries, cafes and street vendors, eaten plain or with butter, cheese, honey or jam, it breaks the fast of millions of Istanbulites, from schoolchildren to businessmen, from the hopeful fishermen casting their lines from the Galata Bridge into the waters of the Golden Horn to the shopkeepers of the 17th-century Spice Bazaar, snatching a bite to eat while they spruce up their wares ahead of the morning hordes. At Gazebo, on the ground floor of the Çırağan Palace Kempinski hotel (kempinski.com), breakfast is a more lavish and leisurely affair: kavurma – confit beef – fried with eggs; grilled sucuk, beef sausage; su böreği, an intricate pastry filled with crumbly cheese and parsley; salads, cheeses, olives, pastries, jams, honeycomb with clotted cream … and, of course, freshly baked simit. Simit has perfumed the city’s morning air for more than five centuries, as has coffee, although it has been banned several times, notably by Sultan Murad IV who, in 1633, made public consumption of coffee punishable by death, apparently because sedition had become rife in the city’s coffee houses; happily, whatever the present Turkish government’s neuroses, coffee is not among them, and those queueing at Mehmet Efendi ( mehmetefendi.com) or nearby 89 DEPARTURES
