Food for Thought

Part chef, part stylist, Hanna Hurr reimagines the art of cooking.

A mossy mountainside that turns out to be a slab of butter; a blue egg that cracks open to reveal perfectly steamed sticky rice; a marble cube with golden veining that is a sake-and-guava cake. These are some of the creations of Hanna Hurr, who bridges the world of art, design, and food to create installations and conceptual experiences that are meant to be enjoyed by the palate as well as the eye. Hurr, who lives in Brooklyn, recently established a West Coast base in San Francisco for her culinary studio, FIGWASPE.

“I’m creatively inspired by nature first and foremost,” says Hurr, a chef and artist. The studio is named for one of nature’s fascinating symbiotic relationships. “Figs are actually not fruit, they’re inverted flowers,” she recounts. “The wasp has to find its way into the enclosed bud, which ends up consuming the wasp enzymatically. It’s a little gnarly, but it’s something that only nature could design.”

Indeed, her first installation in San Francisco, Petrichor—the smell of the earth after it rains—was about connecting to natural environments. To conjure up a forest, a choux au craquelin had a California bay laurel–flavored crust and was filled with a cream of oak and roasted hay, while the earth was represented by a dark chocolate bonbon with a filling of porcini, grapefruit, and white soy. “To evoke the smell of the earth cooling down in the evening, I wanted it to be earthy and savory, with a slight sharpness and juiciness,” she explains.

Hurr brings to the table a background in New York fine dining, a Californian appreciation of good produce and horticulture, and her family’s culinary heritage. She grew up in Southern California, eating and cooking Taiwanese and Chinese food. After studying film in college, she moved to New York and worked in media, and began staging on the weekends to learn how to cook professionally. During the pandemic, she ventured into food styling and started posting some of her concepts on Instagram. Hurr is part of the burgeoning field of culinary art, which has been popularized by New York-based Laila Gohar, who notably made a 13-foot-long mortadella for a department store opening; and London-based Imogen Kwok, who recently created a Magritte-esque cloud of spun sugar for an art show.

Hurr’s work reappeared recently at Glass Rice in San Francisco. For Calyxes, Hurr envisioned a profusion of edible flora in the clean, spare gallery. Guests had the opportunity to pick their own nasturtiums and pair them with different bites. “I get so much pleasure from gardening and foraging, and figuring how to use things in a way that’s delicious but also visually compelling. I want to let people in on that experience.”