Page 118 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2024

Taking Up Residence
As Nobu Matsuhisa opens his first lifestyle development in Canada, we sit down with the esteemed Japanese chef and restaurateur By Josh Lee
THE REVERENCE HELD FOR NOBU MATSUHISA — IN CULINARY circles, at least — is of a level usually reserved for religious figureheads, or stadium-filling pop stars. This is because, while Alice Waters may be the West Coast cook who revolutionized seasonal cuisine, and Wolfgang Puck, from his glittering Los Angeles restaurant Spago, the chef who pretty much invented casual fine dining, Matsuhisa is the man who helped create the blueprint for true hybrid cuisine. How? By gracefully, flawlessly combining the serious intent of the Japanese kitchen, the casual rhythms of friendly izakaya bars, and the vibrant, colourful flavours of South America.
Decades before “fusion” became a byword for cultural insensitivity, Matsuhisa was applying spicy tuna, sashimi salad, and ceviche to his sushi dinners — spicing up slices of yellowtail with small, vivid green wheels of jalapeño, and popularizing rock shrimp tempura, broiled black cod in miso, and other smash-hit platings that, since, have become so endlessly mimicked in restaurants around the globe that they are inching toward cliché. He also introduced new techniques to Los Angeles, methods that changed the game for the city’s many chefs, including “new style sashimi,” the renowned quick-sear method developed in Matsuhisa’s early career to calm his more
nervous customers.
“It was an example of moving boundaries,” the chef explains. “A customer
sent back sashimi because she wouldn’t eat raw fish. I wanted to find some way to salvage the dish, so I grabbed hot oil that was sitting on the stove and poured it over the fish, searing it on contact. The customer was hesitant when I asked her to try it — but she ate every bite.”
Today, Matsuhisa helms a cross-continental brand. In Istanbul, guests can order his beef toban yaki while overlooking the Bosphorus Strait. In Qatar’s capital, Doha, his lobster wasabi tacos are served inside a building designed to resemble a vast closed oyster shell. And the values the chef has drilled deep into each of these global destinations — a commitment to great produce, deference to local tastes, and guaranteed availability of his universally adored dishes — have ensured that the Nobu name remains synonymous not only with dining, but dining done well. But Matsuhisa the man still tries to be humble.
“Nobu is not just me,” the chef says. “It’s also my team. I have strong teams who I have spent years working with and educating personally. They go out and teach everyone my philosophy for good food and good service, so we are all working towards the same goal. I also spend most of the year travelling to visit my teams and am constantly reinforcing my philosophy. We are very hands-on.”
Matsuhisa was born in 1949, in Saitama, Japan, a quiet commuter town bordering Tokyo. His interest in the kitchen was kindled, as is the case with so many great chefs, when he observed his grandmother cooking at home. This curiosity turned to fixation when, at age 12, he visited his first sushi-ya
— grand establishments with sliding doors and spectacular dishes of fish. Though he was expelled from school, Matsuhisa began working his way up the ranks of a family-operated sushi spot in Tokyo. Here, he learned respect for fish — from the moment it dropped at the market to the second it flashed under the blade of a yanagiba. But, after an offer came from a regular customer to open his own place in Peru, Matsuhisa suddenly found himself uprooted to Lima. It was to become a crucial point in his career, a moment when the straitjacketed schooling he’d experienced within the confines of Japanese cooking would loosen, and the larder with which he was accustomed to working — stocked with wasabi and soy sauce — would be replaced with
chili peppers, tomatoes, ceviche, and cilantro.
Peru was followed by a brief term in Argentina, a return to Japan, and
then an even briefer stint in Alaska — where Matsuhisa built a restaurant that burned down just 15 days after its grand opening (the chef calls this the lowest period of his life). But, when these moves finally led him to Los Angeles, everything changed, and the eponymous restaurant Matsuhisa — opened in Beverly Hills in 1987 — soon became the archetypal Hollywood power spot.
The chef’s first few years in L.A. were relatively modest, but Matsuhisa eventually made his voice heard by doing new things in a town that craves experimentation. He brought in fresh fish from Japan while competitors called in the frozen stuff. He imitated pasta with squid, and paired raw snapper with chili sauce. “My aim is always to make the guest happy,” Matsuhisa says. “And, sometimes, in order to do so, I would have to create new dishes, or change them.” These twists attracted the attention of well-travelled, deep-pocketed regulars including director Roland Joffé, who once brought along Robert De Niro as his dinner guest. “Although his name was familiar to me, I had no idea who he was, and I just prepared food for him,” says Matsuhisa on his first encounter with the actor. De Niro eventually became a regular, too, and would go on to spend roughly four years trying to convince the chef to open a restaurant with him in New York.
Eventually, Matsuhisa conceded. “I was hesitant because I still had a lot of work to do in my current restaurant, Matsuhisa,” he explains. “But [De Niro] was very patient and waited for me for four years before I finally said yes. I knew I could trust him and admired his patience and perseverance. We have a mutually respectful and trustworthy relationship and have built a strong partnership and friendship on that foundation. He is not just my partner; he is my family.”
In 1994, Nobu arrived. A joint venture between Matsuhisa, De Niro, restaurateur Drew Nieporent, and film producer Meir Teper, the restaurant opened in Man- hattan’s Tribeca neighbourhood — the first in what would become a global portfolio. Finally, the East Coast could have a taste of Matsuhisa’s monkfish liver pâté dolloped with caviar, a plate of refined tempura, or a bouquet of king
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PHOTOS BY MARK SCHAFER.