Jacko Street: Charcoal, Hamusta, and the Ghost of the Shuk

The first thing that reaches you is smoke. Not the acrid kind that clings to clothing, but a fragrant, oak tinged plume that rolls off the charcoal grill and drifts through the dining room like an invitation. You catch it before you even sit down, mingling with the low thud of bass from the speakers and the metallic clatter of pans in the open kitchen. A bartender slides a pale yellow drink across the counter, topped with a dehydrated black lime that releases a perfumed whisper every time the straw lifts. Outside, Agripas Street hums with the last of the market traders folding up their stalls. Inside, the evening at Jacko Street is just beginning.

To understand the food here, you need to know where it comes from. Chef Zakai Huja grew up a short walk from this very kitchen, in the orbit of his father's fish shop, Avner Dagim, on Tapuach Street. Yaakov "Jacko" Huja sold fish from the Machane Yehuda market for decades, and his son absorbed the rhythms of the shuk long before he picked up a chef's knife. Zakai trained at several of Jerusalem's most respected kitchens, including Canela, Angelica, and Lara, and spent formative time alongside the veteran Israeli chef Shalom Kadosh. In 2013 he joined forces with two childhood friends, Rafi Revivo and Yotam Nissim, to open a place that would bridge the gap between his grandmother's Kurdish kitchen and the techniques he had acquired in professional brigades.