Vefa Bozacisi

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.