How to order food and drinks in Turkish

A Turkish café runs on a short and very predictable set of phrases. Learn the ones between sitting down and paying and you can get through a whole visit without switching to English, including the one that gets you a refill without a negotiation.

Turkish spelling is phonetic, which makes this easier than it looks: once you know that c is "j", ç is "ch", ş is "sh" and ı is a swallowed "uh", you can read almost anything on a menu out loud.

You will usually be greeted first. Buyurun is the word you will hear most in Turkey. It covers "please", "go ahead", "here you are" and "what can I get you", depending on the moment.

Lütfen goes on the end and is the whole of politeness here. "Bir çay, lütfen" is a complete, correct order. You do not need a verb.

This is the phrase the article promised. Tea arrives in small tulip glasses and one is never enough; "bir tane daha" means "one more of those" and saves you naming the thing again.

Afiyet olsun is said to you as your food arrives, and again as you finish. The reply is elinize sağlık ("health to your hands"), said to whoever cooked it, and it is the single phrase most likely to get you a warm response in Turkey.

Ask for the bill with hesap. Turkish restaurants do not usually bring it unprompted. It would be read as hurrying you out.

The first is the one that catches almost everyone. When a waiter offers you something more and you answer teşekkür ederim, you have not accepted politely. You have declined. Thanks, in Turkish, is a standard way of saying no thank you to an offer, and the tea you wanted will not arrive. If you want it, say evet, lütfen, or just olsun.

The second is quieter. Lütfen is a real word and it is genuinely used, but Turkish carries most of its politeness in the verb ending and in set phrases rather than in a please attached to everything. Bir çay, lütfen is correct and unremarkable. Lütfen in every sentence starts to sound like a translation, which is exactly what it is.

One more, for the end of the meal: when someone says afiyet olsun to you, the reply is not another afiyet olsun. It is elinize sağlık, said to whoever cooked, and if that is the person clearing your plate you say it to them anyway.

The exchanges on this page are the same across the country. What changes is how much of them there is. In a busy Istanbul café the whole visit can be three words each way. In a smaller town the same order comes wrapped in questions about where you are from, and leaving before answering them reads as brusque.

Çay is the constant. Turkish coffee is the ceremonial drink, ordered by sweetness rather than by size, and the word for how you want it is part of the order rather than an afterthought.

In the southeast, around Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır, mırra is a bitter unsweetened coffee served in small cups with its own etiquette, and it is not what arrives if you ask for kahve elsewhere in the country.

Turkish answers the phone with alo, and with efendim from anyone being polite. Efendim is worth learning on its own: it answers the phone, it answers your name being called, and it is how you ask someone to repeat themselves without sounding blunt.

For ordering without going in, the two words to know are paket servis, which is delivery, and gel al, which is collection. Both appear on signs and in apps, so recognising them matters more than being able to say them.

Six phrases cover a whole visit: merhaba, menü alabilir miyim, bir çay lütfen, bir tane daha, elinize sağlık, hesap lütfen. Add lütfen to anything and it is polite enough.

The menu is where the rest of the vocabulary lives. Photograph it, tap the words you do not know, and you will have the next visit's order ready before the tea arrives.