Moda Tea Garden & the Seafront
Why is it significant?
Find a table at the edge of the tea garden, sit down, and just look. Below you lies the Sea of Marmara; to the right, across the water, the whole skyline of old Istanbul, the domes and minarets of Topkapı, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque lined up like a row of chess pieces.
Key Facts
| Place | Moda Tea Garden & the Seafront |
|---|---|
| Address | Moda Parkı, Ferit Tek Sokak, Caferağa, 34710 Kadıköy/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.98080, 29.02080 |
| Part of Walk | Fish, Pickles and Sunset Tea: Istanbul's Asian Side from Kadıköy Market to Moda |
| Generated | Generated |
Find a table at the edge of the tea garden, sit down, and just look. Below you lies the Sea of Marmara; to the right, across the water, the whole skyline of old Istanbul, the domes and minarets of Topkapı, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque lined up like a row of chess pieces. To the left, on a clear day, the Princes' Islands float on the horizon.
A waiter will bring tea without being asked twice: in a small, tulip-shaped glass, deep red, with two cubes of sugar on the saucer. Turkish tea is brewed in a double teapot, the çaydanlık, strong tea on top and hot water below, so everyone can make it as dark or as light as they like. Most of it is grown on the steep hills of Rize, on the Black Sea coast, where tea plantations spread in the twentieth century.
And Turks drink a lot of it. Turkey regularly tops the world rankings for tea consumption per person, well ahead of Britain. Tea is offered in shops while you browse, in offices before any meeting, in every barbershop, and here, in tea gardens, where people sit for hours over glass after glass. Nobody will ever hurry you away from a table in a tea garden.
Watch the people around you: old men playing backgammon, the dice clattering on the board, couples on a first date, students with books they are not reading, families sharing a simit with cheese. This is the Istanbul habit of keyif, a word that does not translate well... the pleasure of doing nothing in particular, slowly, in good company.
Time it right, and the sun sets behind the old city, turning the domes into black paper silhouettes against an orange sky. When you are ready, follow the path along the clifftop and down the slope towards the water, to the long white pier stretching into the sea.