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By Michiko Toyama
Posted Monday, October 3, 2005; 21:00 HKT
Japan's got a lot going for it, but boy does it need more international star power. While the U.S. has tons of folks you can recognize in one syllable or two—Brad, Britney, Leo and Gwyneth—Japan has just one whose name is literally a brand.
That would be Nobu, the restaurateur known not just for the classy food he conjures up but for whom he conjures it: just about every celebrity you can think of. Mariah Carey's favorite dish is rock shrimp tempura with creamy spicy sauce, Tom Cruise loves the tuna tataki salad, and Will Smith goes for yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño. Oh yes, and Boris Becker sired an illegitimate child in the broom closet of a Nobu restaurant in London. At last count, Nobu had broom closets in 16 locations in 11 cities. (New York and London have three restaurants each, while Los Angeles has two.) Can a humble kitchen hand from Saitama really become rich and famous by turning out fusion food that is actually great cuisine? Yup. Of course, it helps that Nobu's business partner is Bob (De Niro), whose top pick is black cod with miso.
For the record, his full name is Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, he's 56, and he caught the chef bug the first time he visited a sushi shop as a boy. "Other kids dreamed of becoming baseball players," he says. "My dream was to become a sushi chef." He trained in Tokyo and then ran Japanese restaurants in Peru, Argentina and Alaska. But fame came from the restaurant he opened in Beverly Hills in 1978, which he named after himself: Matsuhisa. De Niro persuaded him to expand, and the rebranded Nobu was born.
Air kisses from Cameron Diaz and Ziyi Zhang are, Matsuhisa admits, "part of my life." But he prefers to put a more earnest, nationalistic spin on his achievement. "Some people say Nobu is a brand, but I never want to forget where I started from," he says. "Introducing something good from Japan is the responsibility of every Japanese living overseas." A noble sentiment from our hero of hedonism.
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