Turkish American Food: Coffee and Tea

Turkish families highly value hospitality and conversation, which centers on the art of tea and coffee drinking. For Muslim Turks, alcohol is forbidden, so the drinking of tea and coffee takes on further importance as a social activity. Coffee first reached Istanbul along the trade routes from Yemen in the mid-sixteenth century when two Syrian traders opened the city’s first kahve hane, or coffeehouse. Turkish coffee is a rich brew, boiled with sugar in a pot called a cezve, and poured into small cups. The pattern of thick sludgy grounds left at the bottom of the cup is often read to predict the coffee drinker’s fortunes. The Turkish word for breakfast, kahvalti, means before coffee.