Menemen, simit, and the slow morning that Auckland didn't know it needed
Ponsonby Road has always been Auckland's brunch corridor. For decades, that meant eggs benedict, smashed avocado, and flat whites served in industrial-chic spaces with exposed brick and Edison bulbs. It was good. It was also, eventually, boring.
The shift started when a Turkish-born chef opened a small cafe near the Three Lamps intersection and replaced the standard brunch menu with a kahvalti — a traditional Turkish breakfast spread. No single hero dish. Instead, the table fills with small plates: menemen (scrambled eggs braised in tomato and pepper), cucumber and tomato salad, three types of cheese, olives, clotted cream with honeycomb, fresh simit (sesame-crusted bread rings), and glass after glass of strong black tea.
The kahvalti is designed for lingering. In Turkey, a weekend breakfast can last three hours. Plates arrive in waves. There's no rush to order, eat, pay and leave. The cafe on Ponsonby adopted this pace wholesale, which initially confused Auckland diners accustomed to the 45-minute brunch-and-go.
But the food won. The menemen — eggs just barely set in a sauce of slow-cooked tomatoes, green peppers, and a punch of Aleppo pepper — became the dish that converted the skeptics. It's nothing like the watery cafeteria scramble most people associate with eggs in sauce. The tomatoes are cooked until they almost caramelise, the peppers add a gentle sweetness, and the eggs are folded in at the last moment so they stay creamy.
Within a year, the cafe had a 40-minute wait on Saturdays. Within two years, three more Turkish breakfast spots had opened in the neighbourhood. Auckland's brunch culture had been permanently altered by a cuisine most locals had never encountered beyond a kebab shop.