A PROPOSAL AND A PUSH FROM A BENEFACTOR
Around the time that I decided to quit, I happened to make a trip to Japan. Mr. Ito, a judo expert who had been kind to me in Peru, was dying of cancer and wanted to see me. While there, I also met with Mr. Nishimura, the diplomat who had done so much for me and my family in Peru. He had gone on to serve in several other countries in Latin America and was now stationed back in Japan. As we had been like family ever since that time in Peru, I told him what was happening at Osho.
“If that’s the case,” he said, “you should start up your own place. I’ll lend you the money. You can pay me back when you’re ready.”
His proposal seemed too good to be true. Until then, I had never thought of opening my own restaurant. After what had happened in Alaska, I lacked the courage to even consider it. Yet this was Mr. Nishimura speaking, someone who knew me very well. He knew all about my struggles in Peru, Argentina, and Alaska, and he knew that I had not lasted long at any job after I returned to Japan. He had been to Osho in Los Angeles quite a few times, so perhaps he had sensed that somewhere deep inside I actually wanted to start my own place. He gave me $70,000, just like that. This was the push I needed.
I returned to Los Angeles and began looking for a place to start my own restaurant. I found the perfect location on La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills. It had been a sushi bar, and I was able to rent it with all the goods and furniture included. This is the restaurant now known as Matsuhisa.
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A Place Filled with the Laughter of My Guests
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Launching Matsuhisa, my first restaurant
JUST HAPPY TO DO THE WORK I LOVE
The building I found was located on Restaurant Row, a stretch of La Cienega Boulevard known for its stiff competition, with places like Rocky Aoki’s Benihana of Tokyo and Lawry’s The Prime Rib. It was a bright and glamorous district, and the broad boulevard always bustled with traffic. The place I rented was just an unremarkable one-story building, but all the furnishings were there, and I reopened it as Sushi Bar Matsuhisa. Including the counter, it sat only thirty-eight people. As I recall, there was a Middle Eastern restaurant next door.
Although I rented it with the furnishings intact, I still put a lot of effort into redecorating it. One of my customers from Mitsuwa was an interior designer. Her boyfriend, who was an artist, volunteered to paint the walls and ceiling for free.
“I want a lively restaurant always full of people,” I told him.
“All right,” he said. “Stand against that wall and pose as if you were filleting a fish.” I took my knife and did as he said. He shone a spotlight on me so that my silhouette stood out against the white wall. Then he carefully traced my shadow and painted it in. At that moment, our logo was born. Coupled with the word “Nobu,” it has become our symbol. My dream is that this silhouette alone will become so well recognized that it’s synonymous with Nobu, just like the Nike swoosh or the Macintosh apple.
The artist also decorated the walls with silhouettes of my regular guests from Osho. Thanks to this, it seems like Matsuhisa is always full of people, which I find very reassuring.
Joe Frieda, who was also a regular guest from Osho, created a little flyer for me on his computer with English descriptions of the menu items. It was very simple, with text only, but it explained such terms as hamachi no kamayaki (grilled yellowtail collar) or horenso no ohitashi (boiled spinach salad). This was a great help, as it meant that Americans who weren’t familiar with Japanese cuisine could understand what I had made for them.
Matsuhisa opened on January 7, 1987. We got off to a good start. Although it was a rainy day, the restaurant was full, and many regulars from both Mitsuwa and Osho brought their friends.
My silhouette at the sushi bar, which is the basis for the Nobu logo.
It was a huge relief to finally be able to throw myself into the work I loved without holding back out of deference to others. It never occurred to me to think about how much profit I wanted to make. I was just overjoyed to be able to do the work I liked best.
I was thirty-eight. In retrospect, I can see that my feet were not yet firmly on the ground. Still, I was optimistic that as long as I had my knife, things would work out. As the Japanese say, “No matter where you go, food and heaven will follow.” Having sunk to the lowest possible depths, I no longer felt anxious or impatient. I was quite content to be moving forward, even if it was just a millimeter a day. Thanks to this attitude, I no longer felt any pressure. For me, it was enough to know that, if I wanted, I could even use the cucumbers growing in the planter at our house to make kappa maki (cucumber rolls) for Matsuhisa guests. Being able to make decisions even about such little things made me very happy.
ONE OR TWO HOURS OF SLEEP A NIGHT, EVERY DAY A BATTLE
The restaurant had only just opened, and we had yet to build up trust in our business. As a rule, this meant that I had to pay cash for all my purchases, whether fish or vegetables. No matter how busy I was, I went every morning to the market to choose the ingredients myself. As the vegetable market closed by six in the morning, I went there first to buy produce and packed it in the truck. Next, I would go to a shop called Kawahara to buy fish because I didn’t have the connections to buy at the big fish market. I returned to the restaurant by nine in the morning and began prepping food with the young staff.
Our lunch service started at 11:45 a.m. Most restaurants opened at 11:30, but for me those fifteen minutes between 11:30 and 11:45 were priceless. As I did almost everything myself, from making the sushi rice to arranging the fish in the case, there just wasn’t quite enough time between 9:00, when I first arrived at the restaurant, and 11:30. Those final fifteen minutes before opening every day were the last spurt, a time during which I was intensely focused.
We closed from around 2:30 until about 5:00 p.m., during which time we got ready for the evening, cooking rolled omelets and grilling conger eel. We opened again at 5:45. I manned the sushi counter with two young sushi chefs, and we had one kitchen staff and two servers. The restaurant’s small size allowed us to see our guests’ reactions from the sushi counter, and we took advantage of this to offer omakase-style service. I was mainly responsible for making sushi, but I also used the kitchen to produce some of the more complex dishes. I stayed focused the entire time the restaurant was open. We had not yet hired anyone to wash dishes, so we cleaned up together and then all six of us went out to eat. By the time we finished, it was two or three in the morning. But I still had to get up early enough to make it to the market first thing, which gave me only one or two hours of sleep a night. The days seemed to fly by. Compared to the times I had to uproot in South America or the time I lost the restaurant in Alaska, life was more secure and stable, and I now had some peace of mind. While each day seemed like a battle, I didn’t mind at all.
FOR MY GUESTS, I CAN DO ANYTHING!
I had learned Spanish in Peru, and after coming to Los Angeles, I learned some English as well. I started off by asking each guest, “Is there anything you can’t eat, or anything that you don’t like?” I continued conversing with them as they ate, all the while watching their reactions to decide what to make next from the ingredients I had on hand. I no longer had to worry about what someone else would say if I decided to make something that wasn’t on the menu. I could do whatever I liked for my guests.
It was through this process of improvising dishes for each individual that the Chef’s Omakase developed, and it’s now a standard feature at Matsuhisa. I usually prepared a total of about fourteen or fifteen dishes for this course so that the guest could enjoy a broad selection, eating a little at a time. Most restaurants in America served large portions, plunking down two or three plates, and that was it. The Matsuhisa style appeared new and exciting, and word soon got around. Cooking for my guests was even more fun, and I began experimenting with presentation as well.
I didn’t set out to do things differently from everyone else. I just wanted to give my guest
s a taste of all the different ingredients I had bought fresh at the market that day. Serving them one small portion at a time was the natural result. For my guests, however, this was the greatest attraction. On the American restaurant scene, people generally ordered from a course menu. To have a chef create new dishes specifically for each individual provided extra satisfaction. If something wasn’t on the menu, it didn’t matter. A Japanese visitor might order yudofu (lightly boiled tofu), for example, and I would say, “Of course!” I viewed my guests’ requests as my homework, exercises that helped me to evolve as a chef. And if the result pleased them, it made me very happy.
NEW DISHES BORN FROM MY PASSION FOR SHARING THE DELICIOUS FLAVORS OF SEAFOOD
Once, when I served an American woman a dish of thinly sliced, white-fleshed sashimi, she told me, “I don’t eat raw fish.” She didn’t even touch it with her chopsticks. I was very disappointed, as I had worked hard to present it attractively. I carried the dish into the kitchen wondering how I could at least get her to try it. Just then, I saw some olive oil heating in a frying pan, almost at the smoke point, and inspiration hit me. I sprinkled some ponzu sauce on the elegantly arranged sashimi and then drizzled the hot olive oil on top. With a sizzling sound, the flesh of the fish turned slightly opaque. Just the surface had been cooked.
I took the dish back to her table. She probably thought I was pretty strange for bringing back food she had already rejected. I knew that she might even be angry with me, but I told her that I had blanched it with hot olive oil and urged her to just try a little bite. Thankfully, she was willing to give it a try. Gingerly, she picked up a slice with her chopsticks and ate it. Then she tried another. And another, until she had finished the whole plate, exclaiming repeatedly, “This is delicious!” She had learned that raw fish doesn’t taste fishy. I love this curiosity and open-mindedness that is so typical of Americans.
That is how the Nobu signature dish New Style Sashimi came into being.
After asking a guest if there is anything he or she doesn’t like, most chefs would refrain from serving those foods. But as long as there are no allergies, it’s possible that our guests can learn to like them if they’re given a chance. Take, for example, Tim Zagat, cofounder of the Zagat Survey, which publishes restaurant guides. He didn’t like sea urchin. In fact, many Americans are put off by its appearance and texture. But I really wanted him to try it because I could get superbly fresh sea urchin from nearby Santa Barbara. I wrapped some in a shiso leaf and nori, dipped it lightly in batter, deep fried it, and served it as tempura with lemon, salt, and pepper. Frying makes sea urchin light and fluffy, so basically I was changing its conventional image. Tim ate six or seven of these that night.
The time a boy who hated seafood of any kind came to Matsuhisa, I really had to think hard. When I asked him what he liked, he said, “Pasta.” But as this was a Japanese restaurant, I wasn’t about to serve that. Instead, I hit upon the idea of cutting squid into the shape of pasta shells and sautéing them. This inspiration actually came from Yoko, who suggested that sautéed squid might have the same texture as pasta. Fried with asparagus and shiitake mushrooms, the squid shells looked and tasted like pasta to my little guest. He gobbled them up. When he had finished, I told him what it was, and from then on, he was able to eat squid. Called Squid Pasta, this dish is still on our menu.
Wasabi pepper sauce was also invented around this time. The idea came from observing that Americans liked to make a sludge out of wasabi and soy sauce and dip their sashimi in it. From a Japanese perspective, this is not “proper,” but when viewed from a different angle, it was clear that this was something Americans liked. I decided to combine the things they liked and make a sauce. I put some powdered wasabi, dashi (Japanese soup stock), and soy sauce together in a pan and brought them to a boil, then simmered the mixture until it made a thick sauce. To this, I added some garlic, olive oil or melted butter, and black pepper. When I served it over such things as grilled tuna, scallops, or chicken, it was a huge hit. No bread is served at Matsuhisa because it’s a Japanese restaurant, but some of my guests liked this sauce so much that they brought their own bread to dip in it. I bottled it and sold it in the restaurant, and it’s now one of our signature sauces and remains popular in Nobu restaurants worldwide.
CUISINE IS LIKE FASHION, ALWAYS EVOLVING
Sometimes when I serve a newly invented dish, it’s clear from my customer’s expression that he or she isn’t 100 percent satisfied, despite insisting that it’s delicious. When that happens, I consider what I could do instead. I run it through my mind over and over until I find an answer and come up with another new dish. If I feel that it has really satisfied them, then I’m satisfied, too.
Of course, I can’t please everyone, but I believe in testing my own limits to satisfy my guests. You could almost say that it’s my guests who create the food I make. I enjoy thinking of all the different possibilities as I try to produce something they will like. In this way, ideas for unique dishes come quite naturally. The new dishes become popular and attract more people. I have simply devoted myself single-mindedly to this process.
Another key element in my approach is giving supporting actors a leading role. If you think of cuisine as a movie, then the stars would be such ingredients as fish and meat. Things like asparagus, watercress, and mushrooms are always relegated to supporting roles. I often think about how I can give ingredients that are usually just an accent for meat a more central part. This is how I come up with menu items that turn sides into mains, such as shimeji mushroom tempura and fresh watercress salad, which is watercress leaves dressed with a sauce made from the watercress stems.
Even when I have complete confidence in a dish, if it doesn’t take off, I remove it from the menu immediately. On the other hand, those that everyone finds delicious remain on the menu indefinitely. And some dishes that fail to become a hit due to bad timing may catch on when revived a few years later. In this way, my repertoire is constantly being renewed.
Cooking is like fashion in that it reflects the times, just like trends in clothing styles. And just as a fashion designer will introduce new materials and techniques to create new designs, chefs are trailblazers who discover new ingredients and create new dishes, offering new value to their customers through food. Ingredients and cooking techniques are constantly evolving.
HOT FOOD SHOULD BE EATEN HOT, COLD FOOD, COLD
Chefs put their heart and soul into making a meal for their guests. Aware of the spirit in which it is made, the guests savor each dish, and consequently, the food tastes delicious. That, I think, is the nature of a true restaurant.
Put your heart into your work. This is what I repeatedly told my staff when we started out, and what I continue to say now. Guests can always tell whether or not we’ve prepared their meal with heart and soul. Food that has been made from the heart will touch the hearts of those who eat it.
Have you ever noticed that when you are at the counter and a chef places a freshly made piece of sushi in front of you, there is an instant when the topping settles onto the rice? Properly blended sushi rice has just the right amount of air mixed in. The instant the sushi is placed on your plate, a bit of that air escapes. That’s the perfect moment to eat it, and discerning guests don’t miss it. This spirit is the true appeal of a sushi-style restaurant. The most crucial element for eating sushi is timing, not any rules about which kind to eat first or how to hold it properly.
Each piece of sushi represents a concentration of infinite details, from the amount of water used to boil the rice to the temperature of the rice when it is shaped in the hand, the amount of pressure exerted, and the size of each topping. The chef pours his heart into making a piece of sushi and places it before a guest who knows what that means. The timing of this give-and-take is the real thrill of a sushi-style restaurant, and it forms the bedrock of all my cooking, not just sushi.
When someone serves me food, I eat it immediately. I want to eat it when it’s at the height of perfe
ction out of respect for the spirit of the person who made it. Hot food should be eaten while still hot, chilled food, while still cold. I always tell the servers to move quickly and do the right thing. When they aren’t able to serve the food as soon as it’s ready, they call out to each other. If no one is free, I will serve the guest myself. I want my guests to eat what I’ve prepared when it’s at its very best.
SUSHI BAR OMAKASE IS THE ORIGIN OF NOBU STYLE
I always kept my eyes on my guests, watching their responses while I cooked, served, and explained each dish. I not only explained the ingredients and cooking method, but also what inspired me to make it and the best way to eat it. Because I wanted them to like it. Direct interaction with my guests is still my style. Through this, I learn many things. When something I make is good, my guests praise me. When it’s only satisfactory, I can sense it from their expression. If they’re not happy with a dish, they often say so quite clearly, and if I listen carefully and make immediate changes, I can still ensure that they leave satisfied.
It’s wrong to see an unhappy guest and do nothing until they tell you outright. The only way to ensure that our guests go home happy is to notice when something isn’t right before they tell us and to act on it immediately.
When I first apprenticed at Matsuei-sushi, I noticed that the customers never ordered anything from my boss. Without them saying a word, he could make sushi and small bites that perfectly suited their tastes. In the beginning, this was a mystery, but later I realized that this skill is the mark of a professional. I longed to become like him, to be able to serve my guests exactly what they wanted without them saying a word. This, I believe, is the origin of my approach. To provide this kind of service, the chef must constantly observe the expression on each guest’s face. That is why every one of my restaurants throughout the world has a sushi counter with a kitchen connected to it.
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