Uma Tuma: Six Asian Kitchens Under One Roof on Carmel Street

A bowl of ramen lands on the table at the same moment a plate of salmon tataki is set down beside it, and the two steam and glisten under the same low amber light. The ramen carries a mushroom broth with a faint toasted sesame perfume. The tataki is seared on its edges, pale and cool at its center, drizzled with a bright citrus soy that you smell before the plate touches the wood. Somewhere behind the bar a cocktail shaker rattles, and a speaker plays something soft enough that conversation stays easy. This is Uma Tuma on a weeknight at Carmel 76 in Rehovot, a place that opened in 2024 with a simple proposition: the Far East on one menu, under a rabbinate certificate, in a city that had very little of it.

The kitchen is led by Chef Moshe Badishi, who came up through the pan Asian world of Minna Tomei before putting down roots in Rehovot. The menu mirrors that background. It borrows from Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Indonesia, and it organizes them by format rather than by country, so a table can move from a Vietnamese spring roll to a Japanese Caesar salad to a Thai curry without feeling that the menu has changed its mind.