Nobu

by Nobu Matsuhisa

  Madonna has been a regular guest from the very beginning. I have known her to stand in line for thirty minutes waiting for a seat when she doesn’t have a reservation. She even wrote a comment for the jacket of my first recipe book, Nobu: The Cookbook. She also drops into Nobu Tokyo when she’s touring Japan.

  The day that Barbra Streisand first visited Matsuhisa, one of my guests pointed her out to me. “Nobu,” he said, “there’s Barbra Streisand. You should go over and greet that table.” I did as I was told, but I hadn’t a clue who she was. She and her friend were so involved in conversation that I didn’t want to interrupt. Returning to the counter, I asked the guest, “So which one is Barbra Streisand?” He burst out laughing.

  During the Academy Awards, actors and actresses from around the world come to eat at Matsuhisa. Italian comic actor Roberto Benigni came a few days before the ceremony the year he was nominated for the film Life Is Beautiful. I told him, half joking, “If you come here every day, you’ll be sure to win.” He actually did come every day with his wife, Nicoletta Braschi. On the day of the awards ceremony, I watched it on television, hoping he would win. Benigni leaped onto his chair and raised his arms high when they announced that he had won. I was overjoyed, too. A poster for Life Is Beautiful signed by Benigni still hangs on the wall of Matsuhisa.

  Although restaurant reviews in newspapers and magazines contributed to Matsuhisa’s popularity, I found that they also had a scary side. People who read about Matsuhisa came with high expectations. Knowing that I had to exceed those expectations to satisfy them kept me on my toes. I poured my passion into serving them and drilled into everyone my motto: “Good food, good service, teamwork.” Later I learned that chefs from famous restaurants had also come to eat at Matsuhisa.

  Major Hollywood producers often used Matsuhisa as a meeting spot for power lunches. I never gave them prima donna treatment, and I think that made them feel relaxed. I treated every guest the same, whether or not they happened to be a celebrity, a major producer, or a critic. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I was so focused on my work, I really didn’t have time to pay attention to who was a celebrity and who wasn’t. I didn’t even recognize Robert De Niro the first time we met, although we were destined to become business partners.

  4

  Robert De Niro, the Man Who Waited Four Years

  * * *

  The beginning of the Nobu management team

  MEETING ROBERT DE NIRO

  The first time Robert De Niro came to Matsuhisa was in 1988. Roland Joffé, director of The Killing Fields, brought him. Although the name Robert De Niro seemed familiar, I had no idea who he was. I hadn’t watched any Hollywood movies since going to South America. As Joffé was a regular, I simply prepared food for him and his guest as usual.

  De Niro particularly liked the Black Cod with Miso and the Japanese sake Hokusetsu. After the meal, he invited me to join them for a drink. That was our first conversation. Although he lived in New York, he continued to drop by Matsuhisa whenever he was in Los Angeles. Sometimes he came with friends or his agent, and other times with his family. He has a special aura, and the restaurant buzzed with excitement when he was there, yet he always dropped in casually without a bodyguard.

  I think it was in 1989 that De Niro first suggested we start a restaurant together in New York. Matushisa had only opened two years earlier, and I was really busy. I couldn’t imagine setting up another restaurant somewhere else. But De Niro insisted that I should at least come to New York and see, and his enthusiasm convinced me to go. I stayed at the hotel in the World Trade Center and spent three or four days with him. He invited me to his home, showed me around his office, and took me to see the property he had just bought in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. At the time, Tribeca was a run-down warehouse district. De Niro’s building was old. Water dripped from broken pipes, and rats scurried inside. Against this backdrop, he shared with me his vision. “I want to start up a business here. This will be the restaurant space. I’ll have a screening room there and my office over here . . .”

  My English, however, was too poor for us to carry on any kind of discussion. Although I could follow much of what he said, I couldn’t really converse. I listened to his ideas and then, in broken English, tried to explain that I couldn’t start another restaurant now because the one in Los Angeles was not quite on its feet. Matsuhisa’s popularity was growing, and I could feel the potential for our clientele to keep expanding. But I knew that my staff didn’t have enough training yet. Although De Niro’s proposal was very attractive, I felt that I should build a solid foundation for Matsuhisa first.

  De Niro continued to drop into Matsuhisa, and I continued to treat him like a regular guest, serving him Black Cod with Miso and suggesting newly invented dishes that I thought he might enjoy. When he came, he never mentioned his proposal for a joint venture in New York. In fact, he teamed up with restaurateur Drew Nieporent and turned the property he had shown me into the Tribeca Grill, a restaurant serving American fare, which opened in 1990.

  HE WAITED FOUR WHOLE YEARS

  Four years after I had turned down his offer, De Niro called me at home. “So, Nobu, how about it?” he said. “Why don’t you come to New York again?”

  At first, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. I had assumed that the idea of starting up a restaurant together was no longer on the table. Then it suddenly hit me. He had been waiting four whole years! My experiences in Peru and Alaska had made me extremely wary of entering into partnerships with anyone, but his willingness to wait showed me that I could trust him.

  In the end, four of us signed a partnership contract: restaurateur Drew Nieporent, investor Meir Teper, De Niro, and myself. Drew Nieporent had not only opened the Tribeca Grill with De Niro but had also founded the highly successful Montrachet, a restaurant considered to be cutting-edge even for New York. His knowledge of the restaurant business and his breadth of experience was amazing, and I recognized in him a true professional even at our first meeting. The chef at his restaurant was selected by Food & Wine magazine as one of America’s ten best new chefs in 1989, the same year that I was chosen. Later, it occurred to me that Drew must have known about me before we met and might even have encouraged De Niro to convince me to work with them.

  Drew and De Niro found a building, and Nobu New York was established in the Tribeca district. Although that area still seemed rather bleak to me, it was just a stone’s throw from De Niro’s home. I suspect that, in the beginning, De Niro didn’t intend to make Nobu this big. Perhaps he just wanted to enjoy the taste of Matsuhisa in his own neighborhood.

  WHEN THE TIME IS RIPE, THERE IS NO ANXIETY

  People flock to New York from all over the world in pursuit of their goals, and the city is charged with an energy and excitement that is quite a contrast to the more laid-back Los Angeles. I was surprised to see how distinctive the cultures of these two cities were, despite being located in the same country. When I hopped into a taxi at the airport in New York and told the driver where to go, I got no answer. His silence seemed to say, I know where I’m going. If I didn’t I’d ask. When I dropped in to a Japanese restaurant near where we planned to open ours and introduced myself, the owner said, “See you in six months,” which appeared to mean, New York’s no pushover. Let’s see if you survive even half a year.

  In the early 1990s, the city was notorious for its cutthroat competition. As the Japanese saying goes, New York businessmen wouldn’t think twice about plucking out the eyes of a live horse. Restaurants designed by architect David Rockwell were becoming all the rage, and restaurateurs produced not just the menu but the entire space and dining experience. Those restaurants that survived were best described by the word “professional”—every element from service to the interior decor was faultless. I sensed immediately that New York wouldn’t be an easy place in which to succeed. But I also felt that if our restaurant did make it here, it could make it anywhere.

  Matsuhisa had only recently e
xpanded from 38 seats to 65, but Nobu New York seated over 150. Although this meant venturing into the unknown, the timing felt right, and I had no qualms about starting something new. The scars from my experiences in Peru, Argentina, and Alaska seemed to have vanished. Working with professionals to create a new restaurant in New York was stimulating and fueled my desire to work harder than ever. A positive tension seemed to course through my veins.

  A PRO SYSTEMIZES THE KITCHEN

  Drew handled restaurant management. The PR and personnel departments were both part of his company, and as he was top in the field, I could leave all that in his hands and just focus on the sushi bar, the kitchen, and the dining room.

  To get ready for the opening, I hired two new sushi chefs and spent six months thoroughly training them at Matsuhisa. Although they were already well versed in the basics of sushi making and Japanese cuisine, my recipes are original, and therefore I taught them by cooking with them. We also advertised for chefs in New York, and many experienced people applied. One of these was Masaharu Morimoto, who went on to star in both the Japanese and American versions of the Iron Chef TV series.

  When the restaurant first opened, I stayed in New York to train the kitchen and sushi bar chefs. After about three months, things settled down, and, for the next half year, I spent two weeks in Los Angeles and two weeks in New York. In America, people who work on both the East and West Coasts and travel back and forth are called “bicoastal,” and it made me happy to realize that I was now bicoastal, too. The best chefs from Matsuhisa also became bicoastal, spending three-month stints in New York training the chefs while working alongside them in the kitchen and sushi bar.

  Nobu New York was triple the size of Matsuhisa. This meant changing our approach to every procedure, even from the very first step of prep work. In New York, everything was systematized for maximum efficiency. The kitchen was divided into different areas, such as the salad section, the grill section, and the fry section, and all of the areas worked together to produce a single dish. For example, when making New Style Sashimi, the chefs at the sushi bar would thinly slice the fish. This would then be passed through to the kitchen where the fry section would sprinkle it with yuzu, ginger, chopped scallions, and soy sauce, and then drizzle it with hot olive and sesame oil. In the case of Soft Shell Crab Rolls, the fry section deep-fried the crab first, and then passed it through to the chefs at the sushi bar to make the rolls.

  IF YOU STRIVE PASSIONATELY TO COMMUNICATE, BROKEN ENGLISH STILL GETS THROUGH

  Matsuhisa’s manager also came to help prepare for the restaurant’s opening, and together we explained the menu to all the staff. I would begin, describing in my broken English not only how each dish was made, but also how it came into being and the thought that had gone into it. The manager would then convey the same thing in fluent English.

  At Nobu New York with Drew and De Niro.

  Notes from these sessions were written up as a collection of stories. The origins of Squid Pasta, for example, became something like this: “One day a boy came to Matsuhisa. He couldn’t eat squid. Then Nobu . . .” It would probably have been more efficient for me to speak in Japanese and use an interpreter, but I think that despite my poor English, my passion reached my listeners because I spoke from my heart. This, in turn, laid the foundation for the Nobu Style.

  In addition, all the servers sampled the different dishes. Although we had never tried this at Matsuhisa, tasting was done almost daily at Nobu New York. It may seem a waste to prepare dishes especially for the staff, but this step was an important part of the training program developed by Drew’s company. Just as seeing is believing, so is tasting. Servers can’t explain a dish with confidence if they haven’t tried it. This training was applied thoroughly, even to the newest serving staff. Once again, I was impressed by the professionalism of Drew’s team.

  YOU CAN’T DO YOUR BEST WHEN YOU’RE FEELING STRESSED OUT

  In the early days of our partnership, Drew and I once clashed. As an expert in restaurant operations, he is very particular about things like costs and wages. This is an area of weakness for me, so I was extremely grateful that he handled these aspects. At the same time, however, he tended to push things through without considering the feelings of those who worked on the ground.

  It was Drew who decided such details as daily sales and turnover targets, but the figures he came up with were quite severe. It’s easy to come up with numbers, but it’s the chefs and dining room staff who have to meet those goals. When people are constantly stretched to the limit, stress inevitably builds up. I worked side by side with the chefs in the kitchen and even napped with them on the couch during breaks, so I knew instinctively that they were feeling pressured. No one can do their best when they feel stressed out, and guests will pick up on those feelings as well. This approach went against everything I had valued at Matsuhisa. The restaurant in New York bore my name, Nobu. While it was bigger than Matsuhisa, I still wanted to create the same environment, one in which we could enjoy our work and remain intensely focused on the job at hand.

  I went to Drew and told him, “People aren’t robots!” He gave a snort of laughter, and that made me mad. “Look,” I said seriously. “I know this isn’t Matsuhisa. I’ll try to understand your way of doing things, so please try to understand mine.” In the end, he did. Working with Drew was also a great opportunity for me to learn about things like cost, which I had never stopped to consider at Matsuhisa. I’m glad I didn’t hold my peace just because Drew happened to be a very successful restaurateur. If I hadn’t confronted him at that time and shared what was on my mind, the spirit of Matsuhisa might never have been carried over to Nobu, in which case I believe that Nobu would never have evolved to its present level.

  CHANGING THE IMAGE OF JAPANESE RESTAURANTS

  Nobu New York opened in August 1994. When summer comes to the city, people often escape to suburban beach resorts or the Hamptons, and the restaurant business slackens off, but not at Nobu. We had a full house from the very first day. Many of Matsuhisa’s regulars were bicoastal, flying frequently between New York and Los Angeles, so when Nobu opened, they immediately made reservations. Their presence was a major reason for our success.

  I was thrilled to find that the menu concepts I had developed at Matsuhisa still worked, despite the difference in scale and environment. Every time I saw this, I felt like smiling. It was a new and different joy from the thrill I had experienced when Matsuhisa first opened.

  Architect David Rockwell’s innovative design also contributed to the buzz about Nobu New York. At my request, the interior decor for the dining room featured a cherry blossom motif, ranging from blossoms still in the bud to those in full bloom. The building, which was originally a bank, had a large space that had once been a safe separated by a heavy door, and that’s where we decided to put the bar. Almost all the Japanese restaurants in New York were decorated in a style that Westerners considered “traditional Japanese.” This included strings of paper lanterns and crimson handrails. Rockwell’s Nobu design revolutionized people’s image of a Japanese restaurant.

  The guests that frequented Nobu New York were even more glamorous than those at Matsuhisa. People often dressed casually when they came to Matsuhisa because West Coast culture is quite easygoing. The space at Nobu New York, however, was very stylish, and guests tended to dress up. Even the presentation of Matsuhisa signature dishes was more refined and evolved. Nobu New York took everything I had done up to that point and raised it to a professional level.

  AN EMERGENCY CALL FROM NEW YORK

  Hollywood celebrities that were regular guests of Matsuhisa also began frequenting Nobu New York. One funny episode I remember concerns the model Cindy Crawford. Once, when she visited Matsuhisa in Los Angeles, I made her kakiage-don, which is mixed tempura on a bowl of rice. She had never tried it before and was thrilled. “What’s this?” she asked.

  I didn’t know how to translate the Japanese word kakiage-don into English, so I said, “Let’s call
it ‘Cindy Rice.’ ” That made her even happier.

  The problem was that Cindy happened to visit Nobu New York while I was in Los Angeles. She ordered “Cindy Rice,” but, of course, the staff had no clue what she meant. I received a desperate phone call from New York. “What’s ‘Cindy Rice’?” I was asked. Laughing, I explained that it was mixed tempura on rice, and Cindy went home happy.

  Hollywood celebrities are used to being treated like stars. At Matsuhisa, however, we always treated them like any other guest, and those who liked that kept coming back. There is a bond of trust between us, like that between good friends. Having such a strong connection with many of our guests is, I believe, one of Nobu’s strengths.

  MY GUESTS’ SMILES MEAN MORE THAN MICHELIN STARS

  Nobu New York’s reputation spread as critics came and wrote articles for the New York Times and other papers. Drew and his company made good use of these for publicity. Food critics try out our food, form an opinion, and write about it. That’s their job. Some are bound to find that my cooking isn’t to their taste, but this is no reason for concern as long as the majority of guests who eat my food think it’s delicious. Critics are really just the same as any other guest. The only difference is that their opinions might end up in a paper or magazine.

  In the same way, I have never been concerned about Michelin or Zagat ratings. Some chefs may aim for Michelin stars, and that’s fine. Everyone has their own aspirations and their own approach. But I personally don’t seek that kind of recognition for my work. When Nobu New York received a Michelin star, it didn’t make me want to strive for more. What brings me joy is seeing my guests smile. What matters most is making my guests happy.