When Nobu Masuhisa Changed Sushi in America Forever

New York Times

2 days ago

Nobu sits along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, with ocean waves lapping under its outdoor deck. It is an interlude of tranquillity along a road that is a maze of construction crews, police cars, fire trucks and the charred frames of beachfront homes — evidence of the wildfires that raced through here earlier this year.
But at 11:45 a.m. on a recent Saturday, the crowd stretched 200-feet deep waiting for Nobu to open for lunch. By 12:30, every table was filled. It was a testament to the endurance and appeal of a restaurant that encapsulates — in food, celebrity and style — a global phenomenon that began 38 years ago, and 20 miles away, when the chef Nobu Matsuhisa opened a modest sushi restaurant in Beverly Hills.
At 76, Matsuhisa today sits atop a restaurant and hotel empire that stretches almost entirely around the globe. He is the chef who, as much as anyone, transformed the sushi scene in New York and, to a lesser extent, Los Angeles. He was one of the first chefs, along with Wolfgang Puck, to have soared beyond the boundaries of his first restaurant to become a celebrity in his own right. And he is now the subject of a new documentary, 'Nobu,' tracing the arc of his life, from growing up in a small town outside Tokyo to becoming a magnate with homes in Japan and Bel-Air.
'I am step by step,' Matsuhisa told me. 'When I opened my first restaurant in 1987, I never thought about growing. Always I had the passions — always my base was cooking. And now I have so many, we have so many restaurants around the world.'
As Matt Tyrnauer, the filmmaker who spent two years making the documentary, said over plates of sushi at the Nobu in Malibu: 'He's gone from one modest restaurant on La Cienega to becoming a global luxury brand centered on food and hospitality. There are not a lot of people that have pulled that off.'
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