Nobu Matsuhisa Quotes

I travel all over the world, usually 10 months out of the year. I stay at a lot of hotels, and the ones I like best are clean and not complicated. You go to bed and say, ‘Wow, I feel comfortable.’

I grew up in the countryside in Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo.

If I am at home in L.A. on a Saturday or Sunday, I like to start the day with a hot bath and then do an hour of stretching.

When I was 11 or 12 – a young boy in Japan – one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there’s a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.

A sushi chef has to spot the best-quality fresh fish instantly.

A different spice is the most interesting thing to me.

It’s true that cilantro has a strange, strong flavor. People seem to love it or not like it at all. Even I didn’t like it at first when I had it in Peru. But I got used to it – it’s hard not to in South America – and now I can’t live without it.

I was a bit of a wild boy – always swimming and exploring the mountains.

Shellfish is better to buy live. In the U.S., because we eat oysters and clams raw, it is very important that they are alive before we prepare them. It’s important to look for a closed shell. If a clam is alive, the shell will be closed. Never buy clams if the shell is open.

Cooking and film are completely different – but I’d rather stay in the kitchen than be in movies.

Cooking is like fashion. Always, I like to try to change. If I’m traveling in a different country – to Australia, the Bahamas, Budapest, Moscow – and I see a new ingredient, I like to try it in a new dish.

I always eat a meal at home before I leave for the airport, so I only eat the soup and salad on the plane.

Every morning when I woke up, my mother was already in the kitchen making breakfast. It was always the same: steamed rice, pickled vegetables, grilled fish and miso soup. Each day there was something different in the soup such as tofu or potatoes.

I can’t imagine Japanese food without dashi, a broth made with kelp and dried bonito flakes. It has the aroma of the sea, tinged with a subtle smokiness, and adds a very important, distinct flavor.

I cannot bring myself to wear the Nobu hats, or the Nobu T-shirts. But the chef’s jacket, that is mine. And when I wear it, I am very proud of myself.

I can live without a computer. My assistant checks my e-mails.

I like both potatoes and rice. You can do a lot with both of them. But if I could eat only one carbohydrate for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t choose bread, potatoes or even noodles. I’d go for rice instead; I eat more of that than anything else.

It’s not unusual for me to wake up in the middle of the night and not know where I am. I take sleep medication to deal with all the flights. But I find it helps to eat at the same time every day.

One of my great loves is golf. When I am in L.A., I like to play with a few close friends: no phones, no distractions, the great outdoors and the chance to bet some money to keep it interesting.

People who make mistakes but try their best, other people will support. But people who make mistakes because they’re lazy, nobody supports.

My favorite knife is from Miyakoya in Japan – I have one in each of my restaurants.

I eat soup noodles for comfort. In fact, noodles of any kind. It’s a food that is very easy to eat; it’s very soothing and comfortable, too. If I could choose any, I’d say buckwheat was my favourite: it has a very good flavour and is healthy, too.

Dashi remains unfamiliar to most French and American cooks, who tend to reach for a bouillon cube to do many of the same things. But dashi is worth preparing and using the way the Japanese do: for poaching fish, as a soup base, and in simmered dishes.

When I’m dining out privately, I tend to avoid fine-dining venues; I like things to feel casual.

I started cooking when I was 18 years old, and now I have restaurants all over the world.

Large fish such as tuna are shown already cut into fillets and bought by the block. Fillets should be almost transparent. Avoid tuna that looks rainbow-colored or black.

Whenever possible, buy a fish whole. With tuna, this isn’t practical; with smaller fish, it is.

Eating a lot on the plane is not good for jet lag.

People eat the chicken, people eat the beef, they still say, ‘Don’t kill the fish.’

Peru was the Incas; it has 3,000 to 4,000 years of history.

I want to always keep going. I don’t want to ever stop.

My business partner Robert De Niro knows a lot about hotels; he opened the Greenwich Hotel in New York City.

Sushi is something very exclusive. It is not like a McDonald‘s, not like a hot dog, not like a French fry. It’s very high-class cooking in Japan.

I don’t go out much.

You know how kids dream of being soccer players or actors? Well, my dream was to be a sushi chef.

I learned from my first restaurant: Make customers happy, make sure the customer comes back again. And automatically, success has followed me.

Some hotels have a lot of mirrors, chairs, you can’t find the plugs, the music is complicated. But the Nobu concept is beautiful, simple.

Every year, I do a New Year‘s day party at my home. I invite my staff and my friends and their kids. Around 40-50 people come by, and I do a barbecue and salads, steak and sushi, and also lots of cheese.

In the morning and the end of every day, I thank that I’m alive.

In Japan, I have my own line of dinnerware, but I’m not aggressive about pursuing those projects.