Turkish Coffee and Its Rituals

The method has not changed much: beans roasted lightly, ground to a powder finer than espresso, then heated slowly with water and sugar in a long-handled cezve until foam rises, poured grounds and all into a small cup and left a moment to settle. You order by sweetness rather than size, sade with none, az sekerli, orta, cok sekerli, and it arrives with a glass of water and usually a piece of lokum. The last third of the cup is sediment and is not meant to be drunk. Turning the cup over on the saucer and reading the shapes left inside is a habit people take exactly as seriously as they choose to.

What you actually see

• The cezve - long-handled pot heated slowly so the foam builds without boiling over.
• Ordering by sugar - sade, az sekerli, orta or cok sekerli, decided before it is brewed.
• Mirra - the bitter southeastern version, poured into tiny handleless cups and drunk in one.
• Fal - the upturned cup and the shapes read in the grounds afterwards.

When to go

Any time, though it belongs to afternoons and evenings more than to breakfast, which is tea's territory. Sand-brewed versions in tourist areas are theatre more than technique. Grinders in the old market streets will roast and grind to order if you want to carry some home, and a cezve is a cheap souvenir that actually gets used.

Honest expectations

It is small, strong and gritty, and anyone expecting a filter coffee is usually disappointed. Cafes in tourist districts charge several times the going rate for exactly the same cup. The sediment catches every visitor once. Fortune reading is sold to foreigners as a paid novelty in places where locals would never pay for it.

Nearby

Grinders and roasters sit beside the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul and inside Kemeralti in Izmir.