Super HaMizrah: Behind the Shelves, Where Charcoal Speaks Louder Than Words

The fluorescent buzz hits first. Narrow aisles stacked with sriracha bottles, dried seaweed packets, and bags of jasmine rice crowd the entrance, and for a disorienting moment the scene reads as nothing more than a neighborhood bodega on a quiet stretch of Derech Beit Lechem. Then the cashier, who is not really a cashier, catches your eye and tilts her head toward a door that blends into the shelving. You push through, the neon hum vanishes, and the room that opens before you smells of charcoal smoke, shiso, and something citrus that you cannot quite place. Low amber light pools across Jerusalem limestone walls. A DJ booth pulses gently in the corner. This is Super HaMizrah on any given evening, and the transformation from grocery aisle to dining room still lands with the force of a good plot twist.

The concept belongs to the Jacko's Street group: Zakai Huja, Rafi Revivo, and Yotam Nissim, three childhood friends who built a loyal following with Kurdish charcoal cooking steps from Machane Yehuda. Their original restaurant, named after Huja's father Yaakov "Jacko" Huja (a respected fish seller whose shop Avner Dagim still operates near the market stalls), opened around 2013. Jacko's Son, a secret bar tucked behind the original space, became the conceptual ancestor of what would eventually land in Baka. In November 2023, in the midst of wartime uncertainty, the group opened Super HaMizrah at number 34 Derech Beit Lechem, gutting half the ground floor and preserving the other half: thick stone walls from a century old Arab house now frame the most atmospheric of the restaurant's three rooms.