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Turquoise: The new Holburn Street cafe serving up Turkish coffee and Aberdeen’s warmest welcome

Rahsan Yucel opened Turquoise Cafe last month to realise a life-long dream. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson
Rahsan Yucel opened Turquoise Cafe last month to realise a life-long dream. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson

Inside Turquoise Cafe at the top of Holburn Street, Rahsan Yucel is teaching me the correct way to drink Turkish coffee.

Rahsan opened the cosy little spot at the end of last year with a mission to bring the food and drink of her homeland to Aberdeen.

She stocks Turkish cakes and biscuits, which are packed behind the counter like sweets in a confectioners.

There are also Turkish breakfasts that come packed with halloumi cheese and hummus.

Don’t forget the pretzel-shaped Turkish bagels known as simit, which you dip into a heavenly mix of honey and butter.

Or the savoury sucek, which Rahsan describes as a Turkish-style pepperoni cut into slices and fried with eggs.

But at the centre of it all – and in Turkish life in general – is the coffee.

In Turkey, coffee is at the heart of the culture.

“If someone comes round to your house, then this is what you will give them,” says Zeynep Bingol, a young Aberdonian who works at Turquoise and today is helping Rahsan speak to a nosy journalist.

Rahsan and Zeynep talk about the coffee shop culture in Turkey, which anyone who has visited the country will know all about; places where friends catch up over a coffee and a game of backgammon.

The bagel-like simit is often eaten for breakfast in Turkey. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson

Meanwhile, coffee is the last act of any meal in Turkey, something that comes after the dessert. And Zeynep swears doctors have decreed that one cup of Turkish coffee a day is good for your health.

“It has a lot of benefits,” she says.

Do I drink the sludge at the bottom of Turkish coffee?

I love coffee but when it comes to the Turkish version I am woefully inexperienced.

I once bought a pack from a local shop and brewed a cups at home. But I’m sure I didn’t do it right.

In contrast, the Mehmet Efendi-brand coffee that Rahsan presents to me  in a beautiful blue and white porcelain cup is made to perfection.

Turkish coffee is brewed in a long-handled copper pot called a cezva (pronounced jez-ve).

The cezva is a long-handled copper pot used to make Turkish coffee. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson

A fine coffee grind is mixed in the pot with enough water for one cup. Rahsan shows me how the froth that builds up in the pot is transferred to the cup before the liquid is poured in.

No milk is added – Turkish coffee is jet black. But Rahsan takes pity on this newbie and adds some sugar to sweeten the cup.

It is delicious. The sugar contrasts with the sharpness of the coffee beans.

I ask if I can drink the sludge at the bottom of my cup – a byproduct of the way Turkish coffee is made.

The choice is mine, Rahsan says, though she warns that the sludge is where most of the caffeine is concentrated and usually undrinkable.

I decide against it.

No milk needed in a Turkish coffee. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson

Aberdeen’s warmest welcome at Turquoise Cafe

Rahsan is delighted when I tell her how much I like the coffee, and I’m soon inundated with a feast of Turkish food to try for the first time.

I also drink a Turkish tea, which comes in a beautifully-shaped glass. Rahsan and Zeynep smile as I attempt to hold the piping hot glass with my fingers.

“I think Turkish people are just used to it,” says Zeynep , kindly.

Turkish tea is served in a special glass. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson

In all, it is the warmest welcome I’ve ever had in an Aberdeen cafe.

And par for the course, too. When the Press & Journal photographer goes down to take pictures a few days later, he stays for a while after as he too has coffee and cake pressed on him.

The realisation of a dream

Rahsan moved to Aberdeen 10 years ago with her husband, who runs a mobile phone shop further down Holburn Street. Her two children were born in the city and she started Turquoise after working for many years as a tailor.

It has been the realisation of a long-held dream to own her own cafe, and she has loved getting to know the customers coming in through the door.

Turquoise Cafe on Holburn Street. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson

So far, it has been a mix of people from the local Turkish community and Scots who have visited Turkey and want to relive the great food and drink.

“A lot of Scottish people come in for the Turkish coffee,” says Zeynep , whose parents are from Turkey and who takes regular trips there for family holidays.

“Not only that, but a lot of them like telling me about how they’ve been to all of these places in Turkey. They’ve been to more places than I have so I’m asking them all, oh my goodness, how was it?”

Rahsan has the warmest welcome in Aberdeen at Turquoise. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson

Best of all, however, the cafe has been a great way for Rahsan to teach the people of Aberdeen what a real Turkish delight tastes like.

She includes the treat with each cup of Turkish coffee she makes, though hers are what she calls “real” Turkish delight, not the rose-flavoured, sugar-laden sweets we have in the UK.

Just one more coffee. Image: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson

“That Turkish delight, you can’t find that in Turkey,” Zeynep tells me. “This one is the actual real thing – it’s a bit more different than what people think it is.”

Yet one more lesson on a day of them. And another reason to order one more coffee.

Turquoise Cafe is at 28 Holborn Street and is open from 9am to 8pm every day. Click here to see the menu.

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