Çay Bahçesi: Inside Istanbul's Tea Garden Culture

A çay bahçesi, literally a “tea garden”, is one of Istanbul’s oldest and plainest pleasures: an open-air place, usually under trees or beside the water, where people sit for hours over small glasses of black tea. There is rarely a menu worth reading. You come for the çay (Turkish tea), the shade, the view and the company, and you stay because nobody asks you to leave. If you want to understand Istanbul tea garden culture, start here: it is a public living room, open to families, students, old men with backgammon boards and anyone else with an hour to spare.

What is a çay bahçesi?

At its most basic, a tea garden is a cluster of low tables and chairs set outdoors, a kitchen hut with a row of steaming kettles, and a waiter who moves between them with a round tray of glasses. Some are grand, terraced into a park hillside above the Bosphorus. Others are a dozen stools on a pavement under a plane tree. The scale changes. The idea does not.

The tea garden belongs to the whole city rather than to any one class. In one corner a grandmother pours tea for her grandchildren; nearby two retired neighbours argue over a game; a young couple shares a plate of simit (sesame bread rings); a student reads with a cooling glass at her elbow. It is cheap, unhurried and social, which is why it has outlasted malls, coffee chains and every other fashion that has passed through Istanbul.

Tulip glasses and the double teapot

The tea arrives in an ince belli bardak, the small, waisted glass shaped like a tulip, on a little saucer with a spoon and two sugar cubes. The glass is thin, so you hold it by the rim. The colour matters to Istanbullus: a good glass glows a deep, clear red that people call tavşan kanı, “rabbit’s blood”.

That colour comes from the çaydanlık, the stacked double teapot. Strong tea brews slowly in the small pot on top while water boils in the larger one below. The waiter pours a measure of the dark brew, then tops it up with hot water, so every glass can be made lighter or stronger. Ask for açık if you want it light and koyu or demli if you want it dark. Some older gardens still use a semaver (samovar), and a few on the hills serve tea by the pot so a whole table can pour for itself. For more on the leaf, the Black Sea plantations around Rize and how the brew is made at home, our guide to Turkish çay goes deeper.

Backgammon, families and old men

Listen to a tea garden before you look at it and you will hear the dice. Tavla (backgammon) is the soundtrack: the rattle in the cup, the clack of checkers slammed down a little harder than necessary, the running commentary from whoever is losing. Many gardens keep boards behind the counter for anyone who asks. Others play okey, a tile game, on felt-covered tables.

The regulars are the heart of it. Older men often hold the same table at the same hour nearly every day, and the waiter brings their tea without being asked. At weekends the mix shifts to families, who settle in after a walk with paper cones of sunflower seeds and a tray that never seems to empty. Nobody minds children running between the tables. Nobody minds a conversation that has gone in circles for an hour. That patience is the point.

Which Istanbul tea gardens look over the water?

The best-loved tea gardens in Istanbul are the ones with a view, and because this is a city of hills and water, there are plenty. A few that are worth the trip:

• Pierre Loti, Eyüp: a hilltop terrace above the far end of the Golden Horn, reached on foot through an old cemetery or by cable car.
• Gülhane Park: tea gardens near the park’s northern end look out to where the Bosphorus meets the Sea of Marmara.
• Emirgan Park: on the European shore of the Bosphorus, known for its tulips in April and its old pavilions among the trees.
• Çamlıca Hill: on the Asian side, with a wide panorama back across the whole city.
• The Üsküdar and Kadıköy waterfronts: plainer places, often low stools and cushions on the shore steps, facing the old city at sunset.

Go late in the afternoon. The light softens, the ferries turn gold, and the tea tastes better for having been earned by a climb.

Tea garden etiquette

There are no hard rules, but a few habits help you fit in:

• Sit anywhere free. You do not wait to be seated, and you do not need to order food.
• Order by number. “İki çay” (two teas) is all most waiters need, and they will keep an eye on your empty glasses.
• Let the refills come. An empty glass is an invitation. When you have had enough, lay the spoon across the top of the glass.
• Pay at the end. Glasses are usually counted when you leave, not as they arrive.
• Do not rush. A table held for two hours over four glasses of tea is normal, and nobody will hover with the bill.

How a rooftop terrace carries the same idea

The tea garden is really an idea about time: a seat in the open air, a glass that keeps being filled, a view that changes slowly and a host who lets you stay. That idea travels well. A rooftop terrace on the historic peninsula does what the hillside gardens do, lifting you above the street and handing you the water and the domes. In the evening the tea often gives way to nargile and the Bosphorus, the same slow ritual by lamplight.

At Moss Lounge the Bosphorus, on Fetva Yokuşu in Süleymaniye, the çay is endless in the tea-garden sense. Adem Özen, whom regulars call Moss Adem, runs the terrace as a home rather than a restaurant, with the Süleymaniye Mosque on one side and the Golden Horn and Bosphorus on the other, and he will remember how you take your tea. Tables are reserved by WhatsApp, and the terrace is open from 08:00 until 02:00 every day.