EatingAsia

Old Tea in Anatolia

After 120 kilometers of arctic nothingness we found ourselves in Çorum [cho-ruhm], a surprisingly bustling little city set in the middle of northern-central Anatolian nowhere. If Çorum is known to foreign travelers at all it's probably as a place to bunk before or after a visit to nearby Hittite ruins. For Turks, it's home to the finest leblebi (roasted chickpeas) in the country,

One of the upsides of traveling central Turkey during this especially harsh winter was the many excuses it offered -- frozen toes and fingers, mind-numbing expanses of white that could prove detrimental to driver alertness -- to brake for tea. Not that we've ever needed an excuse for a tea break in Turkey; even the southeast's scorching summer temperatures couldn't dampen our enthusiasm for the cay evi / kahvehanesi experience.

Tea delivery in the dead of a Çorum winter

But while Turkey's winter's chill stokes welcome tea cravings it also presents a challenge to the mixed (male-female) couple, one exacerbated by the fact that on this trip we stuck to lesser touristed towns in a relatively conservative part of the country: It's too cold to sit outside, and in some instances I'm not welcome inside. (If you've not ventured far from Istanbul, know that the city is a world unto itself. And I mean that as neither compliment nor smear.)

A little over a year and a half ago I wrote about the traditional Turkish tea house as a Man's World, one which I could observe and even dip my toe into while physically staying outside. During that jaunt around the southeast Dave and I took most of our tea and Turk kahvesi al fresco. That was as much by choice as by necessity -- the weather was fine, most other teahouse patrons were also sipping outdoors, and sitting outside faciliated superior people-watching and photography opportunities. On that trip I never felt it a loss to not be inside. And on a few occasions I was.

But despite having by now a fair bit of experience exploring Turkey's back of beyond and a reasonable facility basic Turkish I do not walk into many tea houses uninvited. Some patrons simply aren't comfortable with -- dislike, even --  having a woman in their midst. I suppose that I could choose to get in a kerfluffle about that, but it is what it is. No matter how good the tea or how lovely the tea house, time spent where the overall vibe says "Go away" is time wasted.

Happily, this trip delivered a few accessible tea houses that also score high on atmosphere.

One of the best is in Çorum's old town, a two or three century-old grid of stone-paved lanes lined with barbershops, butchers, hardware and kitchenware shops and -- of course - tea and coffee houses that has somehow survived the city's ambitious redevelopment. After being accosted by a patron who first tapped on a window as we passed and then burst out the door saying "Tea! Tea! Won't you have some tea?" we were happy enter into the embrace of Tıkı Mehmet Kahvesi's wood-stove warmth.

Most everything in Tıkı Mehmet Kahvesi (also known as Tıkının Kahve)  -- which translates to something like Lazy or Stupid Mehmet's Coffee -- looks original, including some of its customers. According to proprietor Bekir, who runs the show with a helper, the shop has been open for almost 110 years.

The tea/coffee "kitchen" features a now rare charcoal-fired copper çay ocağı or "tea stove" set into a stone hearth (see opening photo). The copper tank boils water which is delivered via a spout on its facing to each of two blue enameled metal kettles, one for brewing tea and the other to hold the hot water that dilutes it. (For those of you not familiar with Turkish tea: it's always brewed extra strong and then diluted to taste with hot water; thus the common double-potted Turkish tea kettle -- the lower pot holds and tea is brewed in the upper pot.)

We watched as Bekir Bey emptied spent ash from the stove and then shoveled in new charcoal to keep the supply of boiling water steady. It's a dusty, messy business but he so obviously cherishes the old stove.

A Tıkı regular

The charcoal doesn't really lend a special flavor to the tea. When I asked if tea brewed over charcoal tastes better Bekir nodded adamantly while the customer who invited us in, a native Çorumlu who spends half his time in Istanbul working as a women's hairdresser, shook his head. Other customers who cared to weigh in agreed, nodding their heads as he told me: "It looks nice. It makes us feel good. It's for nostalgia." Fair enough.

Another lovely nostalgic touch: sugar cubes served in old-fashioned brass pedestals.

From Çorum we hit the road for the relatively easy 200-kilometer drive to Sivas, only to be waylaid two hours later by big sloppy snowflakes and icy roads in Tokat. To tell the truth we weren't too terribly disappointed. We took a shine to Tokat in 2000 and our affection for the curious little city deepened when we revisited last October. 

Our unplanned stop afforded the opportunity to revisit a spectacular old tea house on the edge of Tokat's old market district and on the same street as its lovely clock tower.

Yüksek Kahve ("stately" coffee house) is about the same age as Çorum's Tıkı Mehmet but, sadly, is in much worse repair. Its second story, which features a beautiful arched carved wood panel over one window, is all but unuseable. The tea/coffee house is still going though, and in fine weather the verandah makes a excellent perch from which to check out this storied street's comings and goings.

Yüksek's patrons are, on average, younger than Tıkı Mehmet's but no less appreciative of coffee house history. When our host, a former tobacco factory worker in his mid-fifties, grabbed a calendar of decades-old photographs of Tokat off the wall to show me younger guys gathered around. "Look at that," said one, pointing to a photograph taken from Yüksek's verandah, of crowds of shoppers passing by in front on their way to market. "That was this place right here, old Tokat," he sighed with more than a hint of melancholy.

Yüksek's tea cubby and its modern electric çay ocağı are manned by a couple of cool dudes, but neither the new kitchen nor the younger staff take away from the tea house's overall atmosphere.

On the few occasions we've visited the tea shop its tables, okey game-ready with their green cloths, have been well populated and the clink of spoons against tea glasses played in time with a steady hum of conversation. On warm autumn days Yüksek's many windows facilitate welcome breezes. On winter mornings sun warms its two rooms, inviting regulars and visitors to stay for a third or fourth glass.

Missed Opportunities and Pide

You certainly wouldn't call Saray the friendliest pide salonu in Turkey. When we walked in, hungry after a morning of shopping on empty stomachs for edible souvenirs like rough bulgur pasta and split fava beans, the owner looked up from behind his desk and fixed us with an unsmiling stare, heaved a deep sigh and went back to his newspaper.

But the place smelled good, too good to walk back out of, like yeast and browning meat and cheese melting under a grill. A welcoming warmth (the weather had turned overnight; the previous day's harmless puffy clouds were now charcoal gray and what had been a cool breeze had morphed into a cutting wind hinting at snow) emanated from the wood oven on the back wall. And pide, lots and lots of pide were being made.

So we ignored the owner's diffidence and grabbed a couple of seats. A delivery order of 90-plus pide was being assembled on the table behind us. We took this as an encouraging sign.

It was our last morning in Tokat, a town in the southern reaches of Turkey's mid-Black Sea region that doesn't see a lot of tourists but should. Not necessarily because of its beauty -- Tokat is your average Anatolian town -- or because of its sights, which are relatively few, but because of its welcoming populace. When you first arrive Tokat feels closed and conservative. Give it half a day and the city opens its arms wide.

Regrets brought us back to Tokat, which we first visited eleven years ago. On that trip, in which we'd driven from the Mediterranean city of Antalya to Camlihemsin on the Black Sea, we'd squeezed too much into too little time. We hadn't yet learned to make room for serendipity by scheduling in plenty of slack days or to be willing to jetison a planned destination if a tempting alternative intervened.

That trip we met a smart, funny 16-year-old who walked us around town and invited us to his high school to sort-of teach an English class. The next morning we went and had a blast. All the kids wanted to invite us home for dinner. If we hadn't been so insistent on getting to Amasya before we hit Trabzon before we visited Camlihemsin we'd have enjoyed a dozen home-cooked meals in a dozen Tokat homes over the next few days. Instead we took to the road shortly after the class.

Stupid, stupid. STUPID.

This time around we half hoped we'd bump into our young friend, perhaps married now. Surely he'd recognize us (we yabanci don't all look alike, do we?) even if we probably wouldn't recognize him. That didn't happen of course, but we're nonetheless glad that the memory of meeting him all those years ago lured us back. On that first trip Tokat intrigued us. It still does. We know we'll return soon.

Tokat may not be beautiful in the way that Istanbul is. But it is ruggedly handsome, ringed by rocky crags and real mountains further out; from high up the views are dramatic. Kids climb around on those crags after school, and shepherds tend sheep.

There's a crumbling castle too, and stone-paved streets that wind uphill from the bustling "modern" main street. This is Old Tokat, an area of wood-frame brick houses and mansions. Some bear massive double timber doors with a pattern of two side-by-side "Z"s, one flipped in the reverse. Everyone acknowledges this pattern is a Tokat thing, but no one could tell us how or why it came to be.

Agricultural land laps at Tokat's edges and in autumn strings of drying vegetables and fruit festoon windows and walls and women in the Old City, many of whom belong to families who work their own farms, gather on a raised concrete slab at the upper reaches of the neighborhood, where they turn stalks of wheat into wheat berries and bulgur.

Tokat boasts a wonderful twice-a-week market with a koy section where village women sell pekmez and cheese and huge piles of herbs foraged in the hills. And craftsmen making saddles and harnesses by hand and blacksmiths who still pound shoes for horses and donkeys.

In Tokat everyone has time to talk; Dave and I must have drunk gallons of tea between us during dozens of conversations with Tokat-ans on everything from home cooking to the layout of traditional Tokat houses.

So by Day Three, our last day, we felt a warm friendly glow that enabled us to ignore the non-welcome from Saray's owner. We ordered our pides and a couple of chopped salads and admired Saray's lavender and yellow color scheme while we waited for our food.

Which was exceptional, really. There are pide and then there are pide and these pide bore the imprint of years of experience, good ingredients and a master's control of the wood-fired oven.

One arrived oozing scallion-flecked cheese, another spilling tender lamb minced with onion, tomato and long green chilies. Upper crusts were slicked with butter, bottoms were lightly scorched from the hot stones. Every bite held crispness and chewiness and the flavor of good fresh wheat came through. Indifferent ownership or not, we'll return to Saray.

After lunch we left town with regret, though this time it wasn't the sort of regret that comes from missed opportunities.

In case you missed it, Dave has put together a short multi-media on Istanbul's iconic ferry boats. Hop over here, click "play" and take a 4-minute vacation.