Hakan’s adds a Turkish twist to breakfast on Sydney’s northern beaches

Banish same-old breakfasts with a visit to Hakan’s. This Manly cafe serves brekkie and brunch with a Turkish twist.

Sultan's Big Breakfast with poached eggs, tahinni, pekmez, sour cherry jam, cokelek cheese, nigella seeds, tomato, cucumber, avocado, fruit, lemon, toast and Anatolian sausage.

• Seven places where kids eat free
• Ten new eateries on Sydney’s northern beaches

Breakfast is anything but boring at Hakan’s. Here the breakfast wheel spins and lands on Turkey.

Look beyond egg, bacon rolls, freshly squeezed juices and raw treats, and other dishes are well worth investigating over a cup of house blend coffee.

For aficionados, this is a three-bean special (Ethiopia, Colombia and arabica, roasted in Marrickville). It’s for sale too, yours for $30 a bag.

Ottoman's granola with roasted pistachios, almonds with maple syrup, infused with allspice and cinnamon, accompanied by sweet dukkah and coconut yoghurt.

If the name Hakan’s seems vaguely familiar, it is. This Manly cafe first popped up in Rialto Square last winter, before taking up residence in the Manly Lodge Boutique Hotel.

Cafe owner Hakan Cinar has also turned the hotel’s shady arches into a mini bazaar. Fancy one of those super-trendy pastel striped Turkish towels? No problem. They’re rolled up and ready for any trip to the beach. Or there are brightly patterned ceramic bowls and tins of olive oil soap waiting to be snapped up in a state of post-breakfast euphoria.

Foodie fans will find the breakfast-brunchy menu is healthy, but not in that smug, inner temple-worshipping way. Here the bowls of brown rice porridge are gluten-free and pepped up with more unusual ingredients like tahnini, pekmez (a molasses-like syrup) walnuts, almonds, grated apple, ginger and flaxseeds.

Avocado smash with heirloom tomatoes, cokelek cheese, olives, nigella seeds and a lemon wedge.

If porridge, granola or Bircher muesli is extreme breakfasting, the Istanbul toastie should satisfy carnivores with its filling of sucuk, an Anatolian beef sausage, cheese, pickles, organic egg and green tomato relish, sandwiched between miche bread.

These days no self-respecting menu is complete without smashed avo. Hakan’s smashes these green babies with heirloom tomatoes, sprinkled with nigella seeds and cokelek (a yoghurt-cheese).

Smashed avo gets better. One dish, borek, pushes the flavour boundaries. Ramped up into a cokelek-flecked, chunky cucumber and rocket salsa and served with a trio of homemade cigars of puff pastry filled with potato and parsley and topped with a fried egg, is quite delicious.

Home-made coconut and turmeric, almond and caramel slice, matcha green tea protein ball and apricot coconut treats are sugar, dairy and gluten-free.

Traditional menemen eggs scrambled with cumin, fresh tomato and green chillies, won’t get many social media likes, as it isn’t the prettiest dish for Instagram addicts, but it does has bags of flavour. And if meat is a must, it also comes studded with chunks of sucuk, although I’m not a beef sausage fan.

Hakan’s is different and a new spin on breakfast.

Hakan's has opened in Manly Lodge Boutique Hotel.

Essentials

Hakan’s, Manly Lodge Boutique Hotel, 22 Victoria Pde, Manly

Phone: [phone] (hotel)

Open: Daily from 5.30am to 12.30pm.

Go for: Sultan’s Big Breakfast for two, $29; homemade borek with cokelek cheese and avocado salsa, $17

Coffee: Hakan’s boutique roast

Bottom line: $56.50 for two with drinks and coffee

Vibe: Turkish delight