From Taylor Swift to Leonardo DiCaprio, many A-listers have been spotted dining at the swanky Nobu restaurants, a global empire run by Japanese chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa.
But no one will quite live up to his “most memorable” celebrity story – Princess Diana dining at his first London eatery, in 1997, shortly before her death.
“A couple of months before she got into the accident, my business partner invited Princess Diana, then I cooked for her,” says the chef, better known as Nobu.
Admitting he was nervous to say hello, the 76-year-old notes: “I said, ‘Pleasure to meet you Princess. And she said to me, ‘Oh, Chef Nobu, I’ve read about you’.
“I was so surprised, I was so happy she knew me,” he says proudly, now. “She loved what I cooked for her” which was “a very simple tempura, I didn’t want to give anything too strange to the royal family. She liked the tempura, she liked fish, sushi… I think she enjoyed it because she ate it all.”
(Nobu Hotel Portman Square/PA)
Nobu adds he was “so shocked, so sad” to learn of Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris. “I always still remember her face, she’s smiling.”
After debuting at his Matsuhisa restaurant in Beverly Hills in the Eighties, Nobu now has more than 50 worldwide, as well as around 40 hotels.
He says UK A-listers including Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Kate Winslet have enjoyed dining at his UK restaurants – the newest of which is Nobu Hotel London Portman Square.
The chef is known for popularising Japanese food – particularly sushi – with Peruvian influence (just don’t call in ‘fusion’ –”I prefer ‘Nobu style’, he says). Nobu can take credit for inventing ‘black cod with miso’ – his signature dish and recreated by restaurateurs the world over.
Cindy Crawford once requested the top chef to create something off the menu for her at his famous LA restaurant – “Some tempura but in a different way with shrimp, scallops, onions, then steamed rice with tempura on top. The Japanese name is kakiage donburi” – a dish he named ‘Cindy Rice’ so Crawford could ask for it again.
His head chef in New York had to call up Nobu to ask how exactly to make it, because the legendary model had just walked into the restaurant and requested ‘Cindy Rice’.
(Nobu Hotel Portman Square/PA)
Born in the small town of Saitama, near Tokyo, Nobu’s childhood bedroom was next to the kitchen. “Every morning, my mother, my grandmother, started cooking breakfast. I’d wake up to the smells and the sounds and walk into the kitchen”. His mum has since died but, he says, “everyone has a memory of missing their mother cooking.”
The art of sushi making was reserved for restaurants in Japan at the time. “Becoming a sushi chef was my dream when I was a kid,” Nobu says. He dropped out of architect high school to train at a small family-run sushi restaurant in Tokyo at 18, but spent a “tough” three years cleaning and prepping before any of the senior chefs would show him how to make sushi.
With dreams of making it in another country, Nobu moved to Peru at the age of 23. It was there he started to imagine how Japanese food could take on elements from Peruvian cuisine.
“Now, ceviche [raw fish marinated in lemon juice for up to six hours] is all over the world, people know about it, but 50 years ago, nobody knew. I knew Japan had fish so then [I thought] use the same fish and make it in a different way.
“From this moment, my eyes open. Then I started thinking about every Peruvian dish, and I made it in a Japanese way” – and he opened a restaurant in Lima.
(Nobu Hotel Portman Square/PA)
But his next venture would take him and his family to Alaska, with the opportunity to open a restaurant there.
After just 50 days of the opening, an electrical problem caused a devastating fire, destroying the whole restaurant. “It means my restaurant is gone, my dream is gone, I lost everything,” Nobu says. He had suicidal thoughts, he shares, but it was a moment watching his young children and wife that helped him out of a dark place.
“They didn’t know why Daddy was staying at home, they were playing, they starting screaming or fighting and something happened then, this voice from my ear, then I kind of woke up to, ‘Oh, yes I have a family, I have two kids, I’ve got to try one more time to survive.
“It was a very tough time but this experience is now appreciated,” he says, “Because this experience makes Nobu what it is”.
He learned “you can never give up”, he notes. “But no rush, I like to go one by one, step by step, even one millimetre a day. Lots of people helped me and supported me, I felt so much, being loved.”
Nobu opened the famous Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills, California, in 1987, garnering celebrity fanfare. Actor Robert De Niro liked it so much he offered to go into partnership with the Japanese chef – an opportunity Nobu turned down at first.
“After four or five years, he approached me again, so this time, [I thought] oh, I can trust him. Because it was not only money, he was watching me and what I was doing.
Together, they opened Nobu New York in 1994 – the first of many with the ‘Nobu’ name. Over the years some of the establishments have gained, and lost, Michelin stars, but Nobu says it’s not his focus.
“Can I say it straight? I am not looking for Michelin stars, because I never care for titles. My ‘Michelin star’ is customers smiling and eating.”
The yellowtail Jalapeño sashimi is one of his most iconic restaurant dishes – and many people go for the sushi.
But it turns out we might not be eating it all that correctly.
Eat it with fingers, not chopsticks, Nobu notes. “Take it by the fingers, [holding] halfway down and dip the fish side in soy sauce – then eat in one bite.
Don’t dip the rice into soy sauce. “Soy sauce has a lot of sodium and sushi is very sensitive – the raw fish, the wasabi, the rice, it’s not a very strong flavour so you have to just touch the soy sauce – I hope [people] never use the soy sauce with the rice side.”
Despite being in his mid-70s with a huge empire, “In my dictionary it doesn’t have any ‘retirement’,” Nobu says, laughing. He doesn’t want to stop work and “stay at home with nothing to do.
“I still can do [a lot], I still have health, I can still travel – I’m a very lucky person.”
For more information or to book Nobu Portman Square, visit nobuhotels.com/london-portman/.
AloJapan.com