Well, that's a difficult one.

A few weeks after opening longa, a guest stopped outside, read the words “Turkish Breakfast Served Here” on our window and walked in.

They looked at the menu.

Then they looked at us.

“What is Turkish breakfast?”

Well, that’s a difficult one.

Not because we didn’t know the answer.

Quite the opposite.

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The problem was that we’d spent our entire lives eating Turkish breakfast and somehow never practised explaining it.

We’d spent months finding suppliers, testing recipes, choosing plates, designing menus and having deeply unnecessary arguments about fonts.

Yet somehow nobody had asked us to explain the very thing we were opening a restaurant to serve.

The guest stood there waiting. We stood there smiling. Everyone was doing their best.

“It’s tea,” one of us almost said.

Which is true.

But also not true.

“It’s eggs.”

Not helping.

“It’s… lots of little dishes?”

At this point it sounded like we were describing airport tapas.

For a brief moment we considered saying:

“It’s basically brunch.”

Thankfully, years of Turkish upbringing kicked in and stopped us. The truth is, Turkish breakfast is the kind of thing that gets more complicated the longer you think about it.

Which is unfortunate, because the guest was clearly expecting an answer before lunch.

You could point to the tea.

Or the menemen.

Or the Turkish eggs.

Or the shakshuka.

Or the simit that someone has already started tearing apart before everyone else has sat down. You could point to the olives, cheeses, honey, kaymak, tomatoes, jams and baskets of warm bread that somehow keep appearing on the table as if summoned.

You’d be right every time.

And somehow you’d still be missing the point.

At longa, that’s exactly what inspired our Anatolian and Aegean Breakfast Feasts - not because Turkish breakfast needs reinventing.

Quite the opposite.

We simply wanted to recreate the feeling we grew up with: a table covered in small plates, tea being poured faster than anyone can drink it, and enough food to turn a quick breakfast into an entire morning.

Growing up in Çanakkale, where the Aegean meets the Dardanelles and olive groves stretch towards the sea, breakfast wasn’t really something we organised.

It simply happened.

Someone put the çaydanlık on. Someone else arrived.

Another person said they could only stay for ten minutes.

Nobody believed them.

Looking back, our breakfast table was a small map of Turkey.

Tea from Rize.

Olive oil from the Aegean.

Ezine cheese from just down the road.

Honey from the mountains.

Sucuk from central Anatolia.

Fresh bread still warm from the bakery.

Somehow hundreds of miles of geography managed to arrive at the same table before 10am.

Maybe that’s why Turkish breakfast is so difficult to explain.

It isn’t one dish.

It isn’t one region.

It’s dozens of places sitting together without trying to become the same thing.

A little bit like Turkey itself.

Different landscapes.

Different cultures.

Different stories.

All finding room at the same table.

Then there’s simit.

Every country seems to have a bread that belongs to breakfast. In Turkey, it’s simit.

Golden, sesame-covered and impossible to leave alone once it’s on the table. You tear off a piece while the tea is brewing.

Then another.

Then another.

Long before breakfast officially begins, the simit has already started disappearing. Which, if we’re honest, is exactly how it’s supposed to work.

And then there is çay.

The small tulip-shaped glasses. The familiar clink of spoons. The inevitable question of whether anyone wants another.

In Turkey, tea isn’t really a drink.

It’s a reason to stay a little longer, a reason to continue the conversation. A reason nobody ever leaves when they said they would.

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If we’re honest, we’re still not sure we have a perfect answer to that guest’s question.

We can write essays about it, we can debate it, we can lose an entire afternoon discussing it.

In fact, we have... several times.

But we’ve found the simplest explanation is still the best.

Pour a glass of tea. Pass the bread. Start somewhere.

Turkish breakfast tends to explain itself.

Every morning, across villages, cities, coastlines and mountains, Turkey gathers around a breakfast table.

At longa, in our own small corner of Cardiff, we invite you to join it.

Whether it’s your first Turkish breakfast or your hundredth, we’ll put the tea on.

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