# Why This City Is the World Capital of Breakfast > Meet Van, a city in eastern Turkey where breakfast is prepared before dawn. Find out how it earned the title of the world capital of breakfast. - URL: https://langandtrip.com.ua/en/article/svitovoyu-stolytseyu-snidankiv/ - Language: en - Published: 2023-11-10 - Categories: Culture, Leisure, Restaurants, Tours, Turkey, Food & Drinks --- Several hours before sunrise in Van, a city in the far east of Turkey framed by hills and a scenic lake, preparations for the most important meal of the day are already underway. By 5 in the morning, Kahvaltıcılar Çarşısı, the famous so-called "Breakfast Street", fills with the aroma of hot flatbreads and freshly brewed Turkish tea, as dozens of vendors open their doors to treat guests to a ritual morning feast. Over the course of a single day, thousands of people stroll along this cobbled pedestrian street, which is regarded as the "ground zero" of the world's breakfast capital. "During the day there is nothing here but breakfast," says Kenan Koşkun, who runs one of the city's oldest breakfast spots, Sütçü Kenan, together with his brother. "I mean, no bagels, no sandwiches, no soup, no pastries, no kebab, no lunch, no fish in the evening, no live music, no hookah, no alcohol. Just breakfast." Turkey is renowned for its breakfasts, and Van is the capital of the epic, sprawling "serpme kahvaltı", or spread-out breakfast. These morning banquets can feature up to 30 different dishes, and they often spotlight prized dairy products from livestock grazing on the surrounding Anatolian highlands. Such dishes include buffalo cream known as kaymak; murtuğa, a thick paste of butter and flour mixed with a crispy omelette; kavut, a sweet porridge-like paste of ground wheat toasted in butter and sugar; and the famous otlu peynir, a crumbly, powerful white cheese often blended with local wild leek, mountain thyme, fennel, mint and, most importantly, a garlicky herb called sirmo. These breakfasts are often served alongside more traditional Turkish dishes, such as tahini and grape molasses, cacık (a thick sauce of yogurt and cucumber), a rainbow of jams from sour cherry to walnut and apricot, as well as pots of local honey (or, in the best places, whole honeycombs) and plates of fragrant raw vegetables. "You need to have plenty of different little plates of local delicacies," says Aylin Öney Tan, one of Turkey's leading food writers. "That is the whole essence of Van breakfasts. There will be no room on the table for anything else." ## A Snacking Spot on the Silk Road ![](/storage/image/prev/Tyrcia-1-breakfast-1024x541.jpg) The origins of Van's legendary breakfast culture are a matter of debate. According to Tan, it emerged in the mid-20th century, when farmers from nearby villages would bring their produce to the city's bus station early in the morning to sell. "They opened these little breakfast cafes with fresh flaky pide bread, whipped butter and cheeses," she says. Others point to earlier precedents in Ottoman culinary culture and to Van's position on the Silk Road, the ancient trade route linking the western world with the Middle East and Asia, which would have provided a steady stream of ravenous travelers. But locals say the more modern story of Van breakfasts can be confidently traced to the rise of so-called "milk houses" in the 1940s, where workers were served milk, cheese and bread early in the morning. Sütçü Kenan, which translates from Turkish as "Kenan the Milkman", was opened by Koşkun's great-grandfather Kenan in 1946, and its running has since been passed down through three generations of the family. "Many years ago the breakfast hall was a milk shop," says Koşkun. "In our great-grandfather's day, villagers would gather over a cup of coffee early in the morning before heading off to work in the fields or on construction sites. Someone brought eggs from home, someone bread, someone cheese and olives. They shared them and set the table." Far from the mad crowds of Breakfast Street, Bak Hele Bak, which was founded in 1975, is another restaurant in the old milk-house tradition. It is also one of the few places that still serves traditional rose petal jam. "Our place comes from the milk-house culture," says Yusuf Konak, the talkative 67-year-old owner. "We created this breakfast culture. We have all sorts of customers, from 7 to 70: politicians, writers, teachers, all kinds of ordinary citizens. Is Van the breakfast capital of the world? Without a doubt." It might sound like a bold claim, but Van has a spot in the record books to back it up. In 2014, more than 50,000 people gathered at rows of tables in front of Van Fortress, built in the ninth century BC, to break the Guinness World Record for the "largest attendance at a full breakfast". Local authorities have even applied to have the region's distinctive breakfast added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage, which already includes the world-famous Neapolitan pizza, Belgian beer and Singapore's hawker culture. ## The Right Way to Start the Day ![](/storage/image/prev/Tyrcia-2-breakfast-1024x768.jpg) Özge Samancı, head of the gastronomy and culinary arts department at Istanbul's Özyeğin University, says that Van breakfasts, which got a boost from the rise in tea consumption in the 1940s, serve an important social function today. "The central role that breakfast plays, and its significance for the Turkish community, have become even more apparent over the past few years," she says. "It is a moment for families, and it is considered the most important meal of the day." The tradition has grown so popular that Van-style breakfast salons have opened across the country, including Meşhur Van Kahvaltı Sarayı and Eylül Yöresel Kahvaltı Salonu in the capital, Ankara, and Van Kahvaltı Evi in Istanbul. But in Van itself, the age-old breakfast culture continues to put down new roots even now. Matbah-ı Van, which opened in 2020, is one of the city's innovative new spots, with a menu of 12 dishes made entirely from organic ingredients. At Matbah-ı, the bread is baked in a traditional clay tandır oven, the butter is churned by hand in a neighboring village, and a cooperative of local women gathers wildflower honey from the surrounding highlands. "I tried to recreate that homey feeling here, in a small way; I dreamed of the breakfast tables I dreamed of as a child," says owner Gonca Güray. "We want to honor this history. It is wrong to start the day without breakfast."