Last March, Juniper & Ivy restaurant in Little Italy quietly marked its 10th anniversary, a milestone that only 34.6% of restaurants in the U.S. ever reach, according to a 2024 survival rate study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Over the past decade, the Michelin-recommended “Left Coast cookery” adapted to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and its cuisine has gradually evolved under the leadership of two past executive chefs, Richard Blais and Anthony Wells.
On Nov. 1, a new executive chef, Jonathan Kinsella, took over of the restaurant’s kitchen. But Juniper owner Mike Rosen said diners shouldn’t expect a tremendous amount of change. The restaurant’s culinary ethos — an unwavering commitment to local ingredients prepared and served in playful and creative ways — isn’t going anywhere. “That’s our flag in the sand,” Rosen said.
Juniper & Ivy’s new executive chef Jonathan Kinsella, left, and the restaurant’s owner, Mike Rosen. (James Tran)
A New York native who moved to San Diego 27 years ago, Rosen said he never set out to own the hottest restaurant in town … “because hot new restaurants become cold restaurants.”
“We’ve all seen people make big splashes, only to fade into oblivion,” said Rosen, who also founded the Crack Shack restaurant chain. “My favorite restaurants have always been places like Gramercy Tavern that are bigger than one person. They have a consistency and stay true to their ethos, but they evolve.”
Rosen is excited to see the ideas that Kinsella will brings to the menu in the coming months and years. He said Kinsella blew him away during his cooking audition with a white fish he surprisingly paired with a dark grape verjus sauce. And it didn’t hurt that Kinsella’s former colleague Travis Swikard, chef-owner of Michelin Bib Gourmand-awarded Callie restaurant in East Village, sang his praises to Rosen.
Kinsella also spent a decade cooking in Singapore, and Rosen said he’s excited to see how that Asian influence can be used with local seafood, proteins and produce.
“Jonathan has an unbelievable temperament and Travis has said many nice things about him,” Rosen said. “He’s very skillful. He’s mature. He understand the opportunity and he’s really ready to embrace it.”
Kinsella grew up in Ohio, the son of Irish-born certified U.S. master chef John Kinsella, who founded the Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State University and taught there for three decades until his death last year.
Determined to follow in his dad’s footsteps, Kinsella started his cooking career at 22 by wetting his feet at a French restaurant in Seattle. Then, while earning his culinary degree from the Midwest Culinary Institute, he worked at another French restaurant in Cincinnati owned by an alumnus of Michelin-starred French chef Daniel Boulud’s New York restaurant company.
After five years in Chicago, where Kinsella worked at the Michelin two-star restaurant Tru and then served as chef de cuisine at the Peninsula Hotel’s Lobby Restaurant, he moved to New York to work for Boulud himself. He started out at Boulud Bar, then helped open Boulud Sud and was later named executive chef of Épicerie Boulud.
In 2013, Boulud appointed Kinsella as executive chef of the DB Bistro & Oyster Bar at the Marine Bay Sands hotel in Singapore, . That’s where he met his wife, who also works in the hospitality industry.
In 2023, they relocated to Los Angeles where he spent a year with André Balazs Properties, serving as culinary director for both the Chateau Marmont Hotel in West Hollywood and the Sunset Beach hotel in Long Island, N.Y.
Kinsella said that he applied for the position at Juniper & Ivy because he was eager to get back in the kitchen again, he loves San Diego and he’s thrilled to work with the area’s unequaled bounty of fresh produce and seafood.
He was also excited to reconnect with Swikard, a San Diego native who has helped raise the local culinary industry’s profile since leaving his position as culinary director for Boulud’s 64th Street Restaurants group to come home and open his first restaurant here in 2021.
Rosen said Kinsella will gradually introduce new dishes to the Juniper & Ivy menu in the coming months. He’ll also create a new snacks menu for the lobby bar, which will be reinvigorated. Rosen said the bar menu will be for customers who want just a cocktail and snack, rather than a full dinner menu, when they’re stopping by on their way downtown to places like the Rady Shell or Jacobs Music Center.
Rosen said owning a restaurant has been hard work and not always glamorous. But the rewards, when they come, are incomparable.
“There’s the absolute joy when things are going well and when diners are happy,” he said. “Like when they pull you or the general manager aside and say they just had a dish that changed the way they view that ingredient. The lows are low but the highs are even higher.”
Juniper & Ivy is at 2228 Kettner Blvd., San Diego. The menu can be found at juniperandivy.com.