Vogue
Profile
by Paul Spike
October 2000
Haunt of the fashionable and the famous, Nobu is the worlds hippest restaurant chain. As the empire expands, Paul Spike meets Nobu Matsuhisa, a man for whom there are many more fish in the sea.
Fame, fortune or fish – which would you choose? This question becomes less preposterous after an hour’s conversation with Nobu Matsuhisa, the most celebrated restaurateur of recent times and, arguably, the world’s greatest sushi chef. This is the man who combines the finest skills and ingredients of traditional Japanese cuisine with an imaginative acceptance of Western, particularly South American, cooking.
When we met, the 50-year-old Nobu, actor-handsome with short graying hair and large sympathetic eyes, has only just stepped off a plane after a 24-hour whirlwind visit to Moscow. He had been the guest of a Russian entrepreneur who wants to bring the Nobu empire to the banks of the Volga. So what does Nobu think of Moscow? “The fish was good,” he announces. And although he goes on to speak, in charmingly imprecise but effective English, about the other fine produce available in Moscow’s markets and the city’s existing but lackluster Japanese restaurants, it is this first statement that will prove to be key to everything.
“Taken on pure gastronomic terms, Nobu lacks the finesse, seriousness and ritual of a great Japanese restaurant in Japan. But that, in many ways, is a blessing,” says Patricia Wells, one of the world’s leading food writers. Indeed, his recently opened Nobu Tokyo is that city’s hottest restaurant, with customers waiting weeks for a table.
It’s not just the cooking, of course, that has elevated Nobu to an unprecedented plateau of international acclaim. His restaurants attract legions- regulars include Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Barbara Streisand, Giorgio Armani, Gucci’s Tom Ford, Demi Moore, Elle Macpherson, Amber Valletta, Steven Meisel…the list goes on. Giorgio Armani is keen to bring a branch of Nobu to Milan, “I have always admired the way Nobu combines the flavours and textures of fresh ingredients to stimulate the senses,” he explains. “His food is deceptively simple and yet it is this very subtlety that provides it richness.”
Where was actress Cate Blanchett when her agent rang to tell her she’s been nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award last year? Nobu, of course. “I became ravenously hungry and cleared the table,” she says. Yet, in most people’s experience, despite the long wait for booking, a Nobu restaurant is not snobbish or pompously “exclusive.” Indeed, anyone can turn up and wait for a seat at the sushi bar.
Today the Nobu restaurant empire stretches from the sleek Metropolitan hotel on Park Lane to the heart of urban Tokyo. From New York’s trendy TriBeCa to the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, from La Cienega Boulebard in Beverly Hills to Miami’s frenetic South Beach. It comprises nine restaurants as we go to press, with more including one on the beach in Malibu and a second in London – soon to open. All are astonishingly successful (many have month long lists for a table) and ultra fashionable (aglitter with Hollywood stars, top models, fashion designers, media moguls and merchant bankers). Even more surprisingly, in this age of hype, there are good places to dine, offering superb food and drink, eye-catching décor, informal but electric ambiance, and attentive service.
Of course, this doesn’t come cheap. Some of the restaurants can be as expensive as the costliest gourmet shrines in Paris, New York or Tokyo. In London, two people can easily spend more than two hundred pounds for a meal in the stark first-floor dining room of Christina Ong’s minimalist Metropolitan hotel. In Nobu’s wildly decorated New York establishment, I watched a gentleman at a nearby table receive his bill- after a lavish meal encompassing at least a dozen courses – and slump in his chair, face stricken, as if a stroke was imminent.
“My life is the kitchen,” insists Nobu. “Cooking is my life.” But is clear that he, together with partners Robert De Niro and New York restaurateur Drew Nieporent, must be earning a reasonable fortune. And while he is self-effacing and very charming in person, Nobu’s personal fame is expanding along with his empire. Sooner or later millions of people around the world will undoubtedly know who Nobu is and what he does – even if they’ve never come within a thousand miles of his black cod marinated in sweet miso, yellowtail tuna tartare garnished with caviar, slated soy bean edamame in the pod or green tea ice cream.
Certainly there’s nothing remotely sinister about the man or his business. On the contrary, Nobu is soft spoken and sweet natured (although perhaps, like all great chefs, a bit of a tyrant in the kitchen); his food is remarkably fresh, very low in fat and cholesterol, admirably healthy. The prices may be altudinal, but these are based on the cost of the ingredients, many of which are flown in form half way around the world – be it a small but luscious “sugar tomato” costing $5 in Japan, a rips $50 musk melon or a $150 hairy crab. Indeed, Nobu’s celebrity seems remarkable uncalculated; he employs no public relation firms, outside of one for the UK (Elizabeth Crompton-Batt). He has given very few personal interviews to journalists.
On the other hand, Nobu does feature in a US television commercial for Calloway golf clubs that has reached millions of Americans and, a few years ago, he had a small part in the film Casino, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring his friend De Niro. He played the role of a rich Japanese gambler with a penchant for stealing hotel towels. De Niro convinced him to audition. In the end, the rather shy Nobu enjoyed it and actually received more film offers – all of them turned down.
Despite his growing empire and consequent celebrity, fame is not really what Nobu is about, nor does he seem to motivated by a craving for wealth. At the center of his universe, there is one thing above all else; one thing that has brought him fame and fortune. Fish are Nobu’s true passion; his basic ingredient, the palette of his artistry, the great landmarks on his world map.
Nobu became a businessman in Peru, where he opened his first restaurant after completing the traditional, seven-year-long apprenticeship as a sushi chef in Tokyo. “Peru is on the Pacific Ocean and Lima is only 15 minutes to seaside,” Nobu explains. “They bring in fish twice a day, in to the market in the morning and in the afternoon the fisherman come back and sell from their boats. Live fish, so fresh. I love to see the fish.”
But surely he didn’t choose Peru simply because of its fresh fish? No, he admits, his initial attraction came out of the fact that his father, an architect, had died when Nobu was seven years old. Thereafter, he would examine family photographs to look at his father, particularly some taken on an island in the Philippines where his parents conversed with some local “Indians.” Somewhere in Nobu’s mind, Peru and it exotic Indians became associated with this photograph of his lost father. “I wanted to do what my father did,” is the closest he can come to explaining his decision to leave Japan for South America.
Eventually, however, he parted company with his Lima partner. “After three years, my partner said, ‘Nobu, don’t buy so much fish. Food costs are very high.’ He’s always talking about money. I am a chef. I don’t want to worry about money.” He quit and spent a frustrating year in Buenos Aires trying to attempt the beef-loving Argentines with toro (lean tuna) and ebi (prawns). His next destination was, rather surprisingly, Anchorage, Alaska. Why choose the frozen north after temperate South America?
“Anchorage is good for fish, especially crab and salmon,” Nobu explains. Unfortunately, the town proved less then beneficial for the man himself/ After just five months – and on Thanksgiving Day – his fledging restaurant burned to the ground. When one of his employees called to alert him to the catastrophe, Nobu was at home dressed in shorts and a T shirt. Without bothering to put on a coat, he rushed to the scene and stood in the snow watching his dream go up in flames. “I never felt the cold that night,” he says, Nobu had borrowed heavily to finance the place. All he could think about was repaying the debt.
Thus began the bleakest period in his adult life. Nobu returned immediately to Tokyo to face his financial backers, stayed for one week, during which “I am trying to think of the best way to commit suicide. Whether it is to throw myself in the ocean or go up to jump off Mount McKinley.” After returning briefly to Anchorage to collect his wife and two young daughters, he moved to Los Angeles, where he went to work as a sushi chef in another man’s restaurant. It was 1979. He moved from one restaurant to another, then in 1987 he borrowed $70,000 from a friend and, one again, opened his own restaurant on La Cienega in Beverly Hills.”
Then one day, De Niro persuaded Nobu to come to New York to explore the possibility of opening a restaurant in lower Manhattan. He flew him east, sent a limo to the airport, put him up in a fine hotel. For several days, “Bob talked to me about his dream of turning Tribeca into a restaurant area.” In the end, Nobu declined. “I said, ‘Sorry Bob.’ I had to keep an eye on my new restaurant in L.A., for which I had responsibility to my backers. Not the right time for me to open another.” The lessons of Anchorage would not easily be forgotten.
De Niro accepted this decision with good grace, going on to open his own Tribeca Grill with great success. Five years passed, during which De Niro continued to visit Matsuhisa whenever he was in L.A., but never again mentioning his proposal for a New York Nobu. Then one day, unexpectedly, he rang Nobu at home and said, “Now is the time to come to New York.” The emotion rises in Nobu’s voice as he remembers. “He was waiting five years for me. He was watching me. Very patient man. That is why I said yes, because he was so patient. I appreciate his patience. I was almost crying. Thank you, Bob.”
Today De Niro is a partner, along with Nieporent, in all of Nobu’s new restaurants. When asked to comment on their association, the normally reticent De Niro responds, “What can I say? He is a great chef and I am proud to be his friend and partner. His food – especially the back cod – is amazing.”
Nobu’s life is now spent in constant motion, flying from city to city, restaurant to restaurant, consulting with chefs he has hired to oversee each of his outposts. He sees his wife in Los Angeles only a few days every month; his daughters are now in their twenties and the eldest works in Nobu Tokyo. When he is not working, Nobu enjoys playing golf and eating at other restaurants. His favorite restaurant? Da Fiore in Venice. The chef is a lady. She cooks very simple. The fish is great, the oil they use is great. They have truffles, great scampi and squid. At Da Fiore “I went to lunch and dinner in the same day,” he recalls. “I never would do that anywhere else – except Nobu of course.”
At Nobu’s side these days, you will usually find Ritchie Notar, his chef of operations, a personable, street-smart man from Jamaica, Queens (New York), who began his career as a driver for the late Steve Rubbell, co-owner of the legendary NYC nightclub, Studio 54. Notar was present throughout our interview, acting as kind of a protector/facilitator/buddy who kept urging Nobu to tell one favourite anecdote or another, gleefully recounting incidents in which various Hollywood stars had arrived at one of the restaurants, only to be innocently asked by Nobu, “And what do you do?”
“They love that,” says Notar, “because they get their ass kissed all the time everywhere else.” At one point, he has to leave the table to interview a potential employee. While he is gone, Nobu turns to me and volunteers, “To me, food is just like the fashion business. Every year comes a new fashion, depending on the weather, different colors, and styles. It changes. It’s not necessary to keep all the old fashions. Every year you change something.”
As a philosophy for success in the sensation-seeking, kaleidoscopic, highly competitive world of international restaurants, this seems just about perfect. But, of course, there is more to it than that, and some things must never change if a restaurant’s quality and character are to remain at their peak.