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By Mihar Dias May 2025
There’s something gloriously self-indulgent about a big Turkish breakfast. It’s not just a meal — it’s a ritual, a celebration of slow mornings, good company, and unapologetic feasting.
And after a brief, magical trip to Istanbul in early May, the one thing we couldn’t stop talking about wasn’t the Hagia Sophia, the Bosphorus, or even the Grand Bazaar. It was the breakfasts.
Yes, kahvalti, as the Turks call it, isn’t your grab-and-go, kopi-peng-and-roti-canai affair. It’s a table groaning under the weight of freshly baked simits — those gloriously crisp, sesame-crusted rings of bread — alongside soft white cheeses, aged kasar, and the creamiest clotted kaymak served with golden, floral honey from the Anatolian plains. Add to that a rainbow of salads: tomatoes so red they’d make a lipstick blush, crunchy cucumbers, olives in green and black, and piles of fresh herbs you’re supposed to eat by the handful.
So naturally, a day after we returned to Kuala Lumpur, stomachs still in mourning and taste buds still in rebellion, we headed to Turks Bukit Tunku. It sits just next to the reliably popular Kenny Hills Bakers, tucked off Jalan Duta, a stone’s throw from the Lake Club where we’d smashed out a 7am tennis game in a valiant, if slightly wheezy, attempt to justify what was to follow.
The breakfast spread at Turks is, quite simply, a thing of beauty. The set for two at RM99 was more than enough for our post-tennis foursome. Plates of simits arrived warm, their crusts crackling under the touch, begging to be slathered with that impossibly rich kaymak and honey. The cheeses — both the crumbly white and the mild kasar — paired perfectly with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and olives so briny they made your lips pucker in pleasure.
There were brght yellowish scrambled eggs, house-made jams, and a dark, syrupy grape molasses we fought over like polite, middle-aged vultures. And of course, the tea. Endless glasses of amber-hued Turkish çay, poured from those charming twin kettles, as essential to the experience as the food itself.
While Turks has a larger, livelier branch at Glo Damansara, this Bukit Tunku spot feels cozier, a little secret sanctuary where one can pretend — for a couple of glorious hours — that you’re back at a terrace café in Karaköy watching the ferries glide across the Bosphorus.
Our friends, first-timers to this spread, were converted before the second simit. It felt wonderful to share not just a meal, but a memory — a sensory postcard from a city that lives and breathes history, straddling continents with grace and a touch of chaos.
We left stuffed, happy, and already plotting our next visit. Because if Istanbul taught us anything, it’s that some mornings are meant to be long, lazy, and utterly decadent. And thankfully, Turks Bukit Tunku lets us relive that little slice of magic without the 10-hour flight.
Note to self: Next time, skip the tennis. We’re not fooling anyone.
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