Jacob Kear treads that fine line between chef and artist with utmost precision. The American-born, Japanese visionary has foraged, fermented, and lit fires under some of the world's best restaurants, and with his own venture, LURRA, in Kyotō, (which won its first Michelin star just six months after opening in 2019), he has full control over what comes next. 

Jacob Kear will speak as part of Semi Permanent Nourish in Osaka in November, 2025. More information here.

SP: In Japan there are very distinct seasons that bring different festivals and ingredients to forage for. How does that rhythm impact your creativity?

JK: I grew up in California, where you have things all year long. The first year or so here in Kyotō, I really had a hard time adapting to the seasons. And it’s not four seasons here, there’s like 36 micro-seasons. Stuff comes and goes; one week, two weeks, and it’s gone. When you work so hard creating a dish using one ingredient, like Bamboo shoots which Kyotō is known for, it only spends a week or two on the menu. You have to be a year or two ahead in your creativity, then be ready to use an ingredient for like one week, instead of two or three. 

On our menu, we end with a vegetable course, and there’s about close to 30 vegetables that I’ll find that day at the farm or the market, and we roast that in the fire oven and present it nicely. But that just came out of frustration! I don't put a dish on the menu without testing it for weeks. When you work so hard on one dish and then that product is gone from the farm three or four days later, it’s like ‘what the hell’ (laughs). So I said ‘y’know what, I’m just gonna put all the vegetables I found that day on a plate’, and that’s how we got our signature vegetable dish instead of finishing with a protein. 

Every year the seasons are different. It really keeps you on your toes as a chef.

SP: You have worked all around the world, from New Zealand and Australia to NOMA in Copenhagen, Korea, the list goes on. Has there been a moment or a series of moments where a specific cultural perspective on food has changed the way you cook permanently?

JK: I was 30 when I first got to Noma, and I was already a sous chef at the time. I thought I was doing something right, but when you go to Noma, they show that you don’t know anything. You have to scrap it all and start fresh and tap into their philosophy. It’s like, how do you take a simple ingredient like a carrot and make it shine? I still follow those rules at LURRA.

SP: As visual designers we often look at things like colour theory for how certain colours rhyme and harmonize. How do you know which flavours to draw from and which will harmonize, or which don’t, and to make something pop?

JK: Artists will take different colors and blend them to make shades. We have oils and ferments, and that's just the base. It’s all just by feeling. I’ve been doing this for 26-years. 

It’s just burned into my DNA. Something you learn at Noma is how to understand flavours and then keep pushing and pushing them. When I was there in 2012, Renee (Redzepi) was only using ingredients found in Copenhagen. We weren’t able to use coriander, but there was a special weed that few on the shoreline that tastes similar. In Kyotō, about 90% of our product is sourced from here.

SP: In most forms of creativity there is often a tension between tradition and innovation. How do you strike the right balance between the two considering Japan’s rich history of delivering on both?

JK: Kyotō is the capital of Japanese cuisine, and I think of culture as well. The knives we use for our protein main, [the craftsmen] used to make samurai swords and katanas back in the 1700s and 1800s. That craft was converted into knife making. 

A lot of the plates and artists we work with have had their craft passed down from their families for centuries and centuries. In Kyotō, they really try to preserve history. The building we’re in is over 250 years old. People used to live here. The reason Tokyo doesn’t have older homes like that is because the bombings in WW2 just burned everything down. Kyotō was one of few places that weren’t affected at all. Even the way the streets are built, it’s just the way it's been for centuries. 

Kyotō is the capital of traditional Japanese cuisine. But we were amongst the first to bring fire cooking to the city. We like to stir things up—and people didn’t like it! But after getting a Michelin star eight months after we opened, we finally got some respect from the people here. Tokyo doesn’t excite me as much. It has all these different types of culture. But it’s a bit like LA or New York or Singapore; 90% of the stuff is imported from other parts of the world. I don’t think it’s how you express culture, y’know?

SP: Have there been moments in your career, and I’m sure the answer is yes, where you’ve felt your creativity was compromised? 

JK: There have been times where my talents were being used then brushed off. I’ve had restauranteurs and chef-owners take credit for my recipes while pushing me out. I’ve had a really hard time trusting people, which is why I needed to become my own boss. 

New Zealand was one of the places I hit rock-bottom. I had been doing private cheffing in LA for a long time. And there was this three-Michelin-starred chef in Christchurch who was like ‘hey, I’m gonna get married in LA, can you cook for a wedding? So I was like yeah. A couple months later, he flew me out for a week-long collaboration at his restaurant, where another chef contacted me and said that his chef was leaving and if I wanted to replace him, so I did it. 

I loved New Zealand, it was a beautiful kitchen and he spent a lot of money to fix the kitchen the way I wanted it. The restaurant had two hats, but six months later we got our third hat back, which is when things started to change. I started getting calls from vendors and farmers asking if the owner could pay their invoices. Then it happened with the wine. So we realized that he wasn’t in a good financial position. It didn’t add up. 

My family moved out here after seven months, and a few months after that I opened a newspaper that said the restaurant was closing. He blamed everything on me in the media. And he stopped paying for my accommodation. So I had to send my family back to Kyotō, put 87 boxes into storage, and send my dog to LA to my brother's house. I had nowhere to go. I didn’t want to go back to LA, and I just went to Kyotō to follow my wife. I wasn’t even planning to open a restaurant, it all just happened.

SP: But you wouldn’t necessarily be where you are now—with a Michelin starred restaurant—without it. 

JK: For me it was like redemption. Coming out of the ashes and proving nobody could stop me. And it’s also just to believe in yourself, y’know? Steve Jobs said you can’t connect the dots going forward, only backward. Since the day I started cooking, all the dots have been connecting. If the restaurant didn’t close I wouldn’t be here. But I am, and it’s amazing.