JLM Local Sushi: The King David Street Counter That Bet Everything on the Fish

The yellowtail arrives first, three slices fanned across a cold plate, the flesh pale enough to read as translucent under the light above the counter. Nothing hides beneath it and nothing is scattered on top. Behind the pass a cook turns a tray of rice puffs with the flat of a knife, and the sound is small and dry, like paper tearing. Outside, King David Street runs quiet in the late afternoon, the stone facades opposite holding the last heat of the day, the David Citadel Hotel a short walk up the block already switching on its lamps. Inside, JLM Local Sushi has just opened for the evening and the room smells of vinegared rice and hot oil. You came for sushi. What you get is a Japanese bar that happens to roll it.

Chef Yankale Turjeman built JLM in 2017 at King David 10, the same address that holds 1868, the chef restaurant that made his name, and Zuta, the cocktail bar beside it. He is a Jerusalemite who learned his technique in London's modern European kitchens before coming home, and for the Japanese menu he brought in Boaz Tzairi, who had run the kitchens at Sakura in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The JLM kitchen is genuinely small, small enough that some preparations still travel across from the 1868 stoves, which tells you plenty about the ambition of a place that reads on paper as a neighbourhood sushi counter.