Café
Vefa Bozacisi
Ottoman-era boza shop serving a thick fermented wheat drink from its original tile-lined counter.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to Vefa Bozacisi in Istanbul starts three centuries back, with Sultan Murat the Fourth roaming the streets in disguise to hunt down drinkers of boza, a mildly fermented wheat drink he tried and failed to ban. It then jumps to 1876, when an Albanian immigrant named Hacı Sadık Bey opened a small shop in the Vefa neighborhood and reworked a drink that had been thin, brown and sour into something people still queue for. The marble step at the door has been worn smooth by generations of regulars stopping mid-sip.
This audio guide was created using AI.