In front of a gas station at 34 Bethlehem Street in Jerusalem, a small supermarket with stuttering neon lights was recently opened offering various Asian products. But if you pick some mirin, soy and rice for sushi, and you get to the cashier, the cashier will tell you that she's actually a hostess, move one of the walls lined with shelves with snacks, and open a secret door.
Beyond it will be revealed an invested and spacious restaurant with countless seats, a main bar and a stand with a DJ that begins to warm the atmosphere in the evening. Confused? Yes, we also needed another moment to realize that the writer was actually fictitious.
Writer of the East: Behind a Secret Door
"Jerusalem doesn't have a lot of good sushi," many of the city's avid lovers will testify – perhaps because the language spoken by this historic city through food is more rooted, drawn from the communities and cultures that comprise it – perhaps for other reasons. In any case, it turned out that among all the restaurants and institutions that define culinary here, Asian cuisine remains deprived.
In 2019, Chef Zakai Hoja opened an Asian cocktail bar called "Jacko Sun" inside the Jaco Street restaurant known in the Mahane Yehuda market. A secret door that resembles a refrigerator led to him. The place was a success, but the owners, Zakai Khoja and Rafi Revivo, decided to move it to another building in order to enlarge both places. Finally, they opened "Super East" with a wide and creative menu that could be defined as Asian fusion and with a reference to the old place - a hidden door.
Fictitious supermarket,
"The vision was to reinvent the Asian world. Jaco Sun also had limitations because of the small kitchen. We wanted to bring the Sun here and explode with the menu, with the design, with everything," says Khoja.
So yes, if you're a Jerusalemite and have held a sushi crave for too long, there's an entire section dedicated to the dish and it will completely satisfy you. You'll find complex dishes, such as tuna tori (NIS 78) – a crispy rice roll with tempura topped with fresh red tuna tartare, yuzu marmalade, avocado cream, chives and beets seasoned with citrus soy. But also more classic dishes of maki and nigiri.
Tori Tuna,
"We try to adapt the food to the Israeli palate and not bring the Thai heaviness, for example," explains Hoja. The menu invites visitors to share a few dishes along with fun cocktails, and the dishes will drip one by one to the table, unless you ask otherwise.
For example, a Thai salad dish called "Nam Pa" (66 shekels) arrived at our table. It was made from herbs like basil, mint and coriander with seasonal fruit – in this case pomelo. We were advised to eat it from the central bowl with the spoon - so from bottom to top - with all the sauce stored in it. He was sharp and cavalry.
Fun cocktails,
Another dish on the menu is seasonal sea fish sashimi (72 shekels). Slices of Intias were placed on the plate and next to it was a "spaghetti" of kohlrabi that had been pickled and pickled. It all came on a bed of chimichurri with countless ingredients including soy, teriyaki, ginger, apple, Thai chili and more. A dish with intense flavors and spiciness, which do not necessarily suit the delicate fish.
On a Japanese charcoal grill,
In the robota category - which is a unique Japanese charcoal grill built of floors, you will find various yakitori skewers. For example, teriyaki marinated salmon (48 NIS per skewer) or Japanese chicken kebabs and chili jam (38 NIS per skewer).
From the "Antiban" category you can order Ban rolls with different combinations. "I was very pro-banim and Rafi was very 'anti-ban', so we said that if we were already making one, we would take it a few steps further," explains Khoja why they created the Asian bun in a slightly different way and it is indeed different - less "cloudy", sweet and feels a little stickier and conjunctiva. You'll find non-standard buns like Smash Kebab on the menu (NIS 64) - combined with a connotation for American food of meatball with coleslaw and yuzu aioli.
Anti Ban, Photo: Hila Dudal
Main dishes that are rice- or noodle-based include ramen (NIS 82), Pad Thai (NIS 82) or green curry (NIS 86).
So although we entered by mistake, we discovered a place that joins the list of more and more restaurants with a meticulous menu, which provide a place of entertainment for the kosher observant public.
Bethlehem 34, Jerusalem
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