This is one of my coolest, omakase + Michelin Star dining experience.
Embedded in a very unassuming neighborhood, townhouses, craft tofu shop, and local craft shops. Here's Lurra. They are in a 250 year old townhouse, there's no gas line, so they cook over fire oven. As a matter of fact, one of the staff's job all night is to keep the fire going. You can see the freshly chopped wood in their mini courtyard (also on your way to the bathroom).
Lurra means Earth in Basque language, and given how much respect the chef has for the environment, you can see why he named it that.
Chef Jacob Kear (far left) of American and Japanese descent is the master mind behind this place. Along with his kitchen staff, they presented some very creative ways for food, that one doesn't get to experience in a run of a mill type place.
First up: Blue Corn Sope with avocado, smoked caviar and sea urchin. It was inspired by Mexican culture and Japanese avocado. That's a new one for me, texture is a bit different than California one, but everything is locally soured.
For pairing: (not pictured) they had mulled wine with berries from Korea, but non-alcoholic. So when I made the reservation, I did note that I will be doing on-alcoholic pairing. So guess what? The chef mixed every single drink for the pairing for the event. Yay, me!!
Looks like a barbecue rib, right? Welp, nope! It's Beetroot paste and picked rose petals and vegan xo sauce. It's so weird and amazing at the same time. They get these roses from Hokkaido, and wrap the petals around this skewer and bind with beetroot and bee pollen mix, then smoked. The XO sauce, is made with fermented chili to mock that taste. If that's not creative, I don't know what is. The texture is like a vegan meat type texture, but smoother.
For the pairing, we got Kobucha with Yuzu Soda, I'd have this by itself again any day!
This is one of the prettier dishes that I've had. This is Daikon and Hibiscus taco with aged Kotora tuna inside. All the flowers on this are edible. The red came from hibiscus, the tuna is dry aged 5 days with ceviche broth, which has 5 flavors to achieve the umami flavor.
You see, that guy's job all night is to keep the fire going so they can cook. The counter seat 10, and in my session, it was maintain Americans. There was a couple that's local celebrating their anniversary.
This is one of my favorite dishes, Roasted Cauliflower fried on top. Once you crack it like a creme brûlée top...
... the texture is like a chawamushi, but it's roasted cauliflower curd with blowfish shirako (milt), mix in with Spring Truffle. The flavors are strong, but not overpowering. It goes down smooth.
Pairing for the next course: it's Ama Sake with clarified banana and local temple water. It has a very milky texture but the flavor is like a lassi. To be paired with:
Carrots! It is native to Kyoto, took 14 days to prepared. They cooked it in its own juice, smoked, dried, and repeat. It has a dab of yogurt, BBQ sauce at the bottom. But the texture of this way of preparation have the texture of meat-like. It was so damn good.
You can see the kitchen staff is constantly moving around preparing our dishes. So amazing to see them work.
Next up: we have Flouder with Nordic Chimichurri and smoked fish froth.
But! Before we dig in, they have a pull away bread which is a brioche with seaweed.
There is flounder underneath the flower petals there. The flounder is from bay 2 hours from Kyoto. It is crispy on the outside, it has layer of mushroom, black bean miso with berries reduction. The chimichurri sauce is at the bottom covered by the froth.
The crispy part of the fish was a nice surprise. You're supposed to use the bread to soak up the chimichurri sauce, but the bread itself is so good that I can eat that whole thing without dipping anything.
Next paring: red beetroot kombucha, pomegranate juice and juniper oil. It does have the texture of a smoothie blend, but not super sweet.
Next course is the aged wild boar fro Hiroshima. Along with burdock root and morel mushroom on that plate. It has puree green, spinach, and burdock root all have this earthy flavored. They cooked the sauce with apple cider vinegar and Butterberg flowers.
Definitely very interesting, not uncommon to have apple cider vinegar with pork, but it's my first time to have thicker texture by mixing flowers in there.
Next pairing: Clarify Banana with coffee. The ice cube is also coffee.
Chef Kear has been cooking since age 7 with his Japanese grandmother, and started part time cooking at 15 years old at a local Italian restaurant and worked his way up to working under Rene Redzepi at Noma. Where they are currently the number 1 restaurant in the world.
His staff is also from all over, there's locals that work under chef, one of the staff is from Australia, and someone from Amsterdam, and someone fro Latin America, they definitely from all over.
This course is inspired by Oaxaca. This is salsa, with green chili, lined with all edible flower.
This dish just looked impressive.... The pattern on the plate is mole negro. It is decorated with 20 veggies from all over Kyoto. There are radish, lime, jicama, sweet potato orange, Okinawa raw sugar. They are all at the tail end of winter vegetable season and that's where I learn that they have 2 weeks micro-season, and they have their unique veggies. I had to ask chef if he just wanted to be sure that we eat our veggies. I will say, dragging my veggie over the mole does add alot of flavors to it. And no, I did not eat all 20 pieces on that plate.
Next drink: Sochu mixed with tea. And that tea is black tea, which is roasted goubo (aka beetroot) tea.
This is Rice Course, it has tea drop peas, surf clams, pea husks with broth dash and flava beans. If anyone who knows me well, knows that I don't do peas. But....
I cleaned the bowl. You know why, it's because it's fresh peas, they literally just grown them in their lab upstairs, picked and freshly prepared.
One of three dessert courses: this is Snowball with Hasp berry and Spruce. Inside is apple sorbet, ganache, crumble and yogurt snow on top.
You crack it open and it's yummy every bite.
This is aerated sake with strawberry and preserve red currant. This is their take of strawberry short cake, with the compote and red currant. Definitely never had dessert with aerated sake before, that's my first, and it's very light in texture which is very easy to eat the entire thing.
We can smell the donut they were making in the kitchen, and when it arrived, we were very curious. The base is frozen, with an orange in the middle. So we were curious with: what's up with the donut. Well, turns out, inside the donut is buttermilk ice cream. It's Milkan orange covered in donut batter, then fried.
I would say, I was pretty full by this point. But I did take a bite. It is basically fried ice cream, but did not finish. I wanted to, just can't squeeze that all in.
That said, it was a very fun experience. How often do you get to do an up close and personal meal prepared right in front of you?! You get to ask the chef their experience, what they learned, what they love, their process. That part of dining is way more fun and interesting to be accompanied by the beautiful food.
Here's the deal, as soon as you know you'll be in the area, go book it. Their website is in Japanese, but you can Google Translate the steps, it's do-able. Translation is pretty spot on. Most importantly, put in your cell number for confirmation info. They have two seatings at 5:30p and 8:30p, and the experience does goes for almost 3 hours.
The neighborhood is cute, easily assessable by bus. There is a cute little river nearby, great for pictures. So explore a little before dinner.
Lurra Kyoto
605-0021 Kyoto-fu, Kyoto-shi, Higashiyam-ku, Sekisenincho 396
