How does a small, modest establishment survive amidst a string of luxurious waterside mansions, several state-of-the-art shops of international coffee retailers and expensive fish restaurants? The answer is simple really: With its staff of five jumpy waiters, a boisterous and jovial cook and a pleasant smell of fresh ground Turkish coffee oozing out of small, uneven, wooden windows, Emek Kahve defeats capitalism in one quick blow.

Located beautifully by the Yeniköy pier on the northern part of the Bosporus, the front part of coffee house hosts bands of local shopkeepers, cabbies, grocers and unemployed men, who perch on their chairs all day playing cards and sipping tea. Out in the back of the coffee house, though, lies a more fascinating and quite obscure dining hall, which initially seems to be merely an extension of the kitchen.

One must follow the smell of eggs scrambled in butter to figure out that this dining hall stretches out towards the waterfront and can seat 40 people on its old, wooden benches under a cascade of vine leaves. Sorry Starbucks!

I usually go there on a weekday morning and after securing a nice chair by the water, I order the menemen, an authentic egg dish, dunk some crisp white bread in its juice and wash it down with some freshly brewed Turkish tea.

As I unroll my newspaper, I listen to the sound of the leaves bristling overhead- only to be interrupted by the giggle of one of the older waiters of Emek. I don’t know if he enjoys picking on regulars but he almost always attempts to play tricks on me.

Once, after acknowledging that I am annoyingly picky about which ingredients I wanted in my menemen and yet unbearably hungry, he brought before me an omelette containing a huge chunk of sucuk, a spicy Turkish sausage. Confused, miserable and somewhat angry, I looked up and quipped, »This is not what I ordered«. He coolly shook his head and said »Oh yes it is. It’s omelette with extra sucuk. Now eat it«! I was aghast! While I babbled quite ineffectively, he began chuckling and eventually broke into laughter. He gave me a friendly pat on the back and handed over the brass pan containing the correct order. In his broken English, he admitted that he enjoyed laughing with foreigners.

’Laughing at or laughing with’ I wondered as I watched him walk away. Towards the end of my second cup of freshly brewed tea, he was a few tables away, pulling someone else’s leg…

EMEK KAHVE, Daire Sokak No:17/1 Yeniköy, Istanbul

Some friends of mine have this habit of jogging the Belgrade forest and get all sweaty early on Sunday mornings.

I’m no particular early bird, so I save my efforts for the second leg of the ordeal: The brunch at Cuppa in the Cihangir district. While they go on about how great their exercise was, I get my self lost in the incredible list of fresh juices and smoothies.

Should I go for the ’S.O.S juice’ with apple, lemon, lettuce and orange or the ’Energizer juice’ with strawberry, banana and orange, or should I take two and also ask for the ’Vegi-rizer juice’ with beetroot, carrot, parsley, red pepper and spinach? It’s not an easy call, and then comes the choice of breakfast.

Here I tend to stick to the bread rolls with smoked salmon, poached eggs and sauce hollandaise, but the traditional Turkish egg dish, menemen, and the yoghurt with muesli are also extremely tempting.

Regulars to Cuppa bring their laptops and have the coffee last for hours while they shift their attention between their emails and the Radikal newspaper – a favourite reading with Turkey’s leftist and globalised intellectuals.

CUPPA, Yeni Yuva Sokak, 26/5, Cihangir, Istanbul