Nobu’s Rise To All-Star Chef Documented In Matt Tyrnauer Film

To observe chef Nobu Matsuhisa prepare cuisine is to see an artist at work.

He arrays pink-hued slices of raw fish of uniform thickness, shaped in blossom pattern and dotted with miso, on his preferred culinary canvas – always a white plate, permitting the colors to pop. It is a feast for the eye as much as for the belly. The aesthetic and gustatory experience of a Nobu meal has made him renowned around the world.

Matsuhisa’s unexpected arc from neophyte sushi chef to heart of an empire of restaurants and hotels is traced in the new documentary Nobu, directed by Matt Tyrnauer. It’s now playing in Los Angeles, the city that more than any other nourished Nobu’s rise to global acclaim. Though Nobu – along with his business partners actor Robert De Niro and former movie producer Meir Teper – have effectively conquered the globe, this isn’t an “unimpeded march to glory” tale.

“Nobu, who had a lot of tragedy and repeated failure, didn’t really become successful until he was almost 40,” Tyrnauer tells Deadline. “He was, in fact, quite the opposite of successful. He was a serial failure before that for various reasons.”

As the documentary explores, Matsuhisa was a bit of a wayward youth until he began learning to make sushi at age 17 at Matsuei, a restaurant in Tokyo. It was a seven-year apprenticeship that culminated with him heading with his wife to Lima, Peru to work in an establishment where eventually he adapted sushi to local tastes.

“He really made his name there, and he began to combine Peruvian ingredients in traditional Japanese cooking. In Peru, there’s a tradition of cuisine called Nikkei, which is the generation of Japanese immigrants who began to put chili and cilantro and things like that [into sushi].  Ceviche is a big part of that,” Tyrnauer explains. “He does actually combine ingredients [from both countries] and breaks the rules of Japanese cuisine, and that is an essential element of the story.”

A three-year stint in Lima ended when the restaurant owner told Nobu to user cheaper fish to maximize profits. Later, Matsuhisa and his family relocated to distant Alaska where he opened a restaurant that got hit by terrible misfortune.

“The restaurant he first owned a piece of in Anchorage in the ‘80s burnt down. He didn’t have insurance,” notes Tyrnauer. “He was really pushed to the brink and contemplated suicide. And then his next move was to Los Angeles after a brief trip back to Japan. And he started all over again as just a mere sushi chef on Third Street.”

The tide turned in 1987 when he opened his own restaurant in L.A. bearing his last name – Matsuhisa. The great food writer Ruth Reichl, then working for the Los Angeles Times, declared the fare sensational. The spot became enormously popular with entertainment industry notables. A year after Matsuhisa opened, a certain eminent actor from New York booked a table – Robert De Niro, in the company of his pal, director Roland Joffé. Delighted with his diner, the two-time Oscar winner told Nobu, “Hey, if you ever want to open a restaurant in New York, let me know” (or words to that effect).

It took about six years for that germ of an idea to sprout, but when Nobu opened in Lower Manhattan, it took off.

“I lived a few blocks from that, coincidentally at the time. I remember it very well. I went there a lot,” recalls Tyrnauer. “That took Manhattan by storm. It defined Tribeca, helped define it. There were only a few good restaurants down there at the time. That was the talk of the town.”

De Niro’s Goodfellas Moment

A fascinating element to Nobu is De Niro’s involvement in “growing the business” as they say in money circles. He’s no passive investor, content to tally earnings. He’s an idea man, as illustrated in the film (for instance, he advocated calling the NYC location “Nobu” after the chef’s first name, instead of “Matsuhisa” as others had recommended).

“I really think that it’s one of the few instances where a very famous person doesn’t just put their name on a brand and reap the benefits from it,” the filmmaker observes. “He really was that originator of the concept and got Nobu into the idea of expanding beyond more than one restaurant. It’s a really interesting organic business story.”

There are now 55 Nobu restaurants around the world and 45 hotels – the first of the boutique locales opening as “a hotel within a hotel” at Ceasar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The documentary includes a remarkably candid “board room” style scene where De Niro, Meir Teper, and Nobu debate further expansion. Teper outlines a plan but the more De Niro hears of it, the less he likes it.

“He wants to keep a tight grip on what they’re doing, and he is getting heated because he’s afraid that they’re expanding too far in the wrong way,” says Tyrnauer. “This was a meeting that became explosive. It gets a little Goodfellas. De Niro gets tough.”

No one demanded Tyrnauer core out the scene, like a bad spot in an apple. Though it’s not as if anyone present doubted the authentic tension the filmmaker had captured.

“[Teper] came out of the meeting and said, ‘You don’t want to use that, do you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I definitely want to use that, and I think you’ll thank me in the end.’ And he did,” Tyrnauer recalls. “In fact, after the premiere at Tribeca, he came up to me and said, ‘Everyone really likes that scene. I’m so glad that you told me that you needed to use it.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s the way it goes.’ I mean, you need conflict.”

The Tooth

I can’t go further without mentioning something in the film that amused me. In some of the scenes with De Niro it becomes apparent that he’s missing an incisor.

“I didn’t even notice it on the day of the shoot,” Tyrnauer notes, “but I guess he’s got a tooth that is not present near the front.”

I jokingly asked Tyrnauer if he had socked the actor in the kisser. Not so, he assured me.

“I think one of his staff told me that he had lost it while he was shooting in Oklahoma with Scorsese,” presumably on the set of Killers of the Flower Moon. “Either the dental work wasn’t complete, or it was in mid-process. So, I think he’d been injured in the line of duty.”

How many stars of De Niro’s stature would wave off any worries about being filmed while lacking a front tooth?

“He’s all about image because he’s a movie star… but for me, that’s someone who’s really comfortable in his own skin,” Tyrnauer observes. “And it’s never come up, actually. He’s seen the film; it’s never come up. We’ve talked about the film quite a bit. He’s not mentioned it, and for me that’s a virtue, not a flaw.”

Tyrnauer added, “It seemed to be telling about the character of the guy.” In that respect, the film can be seen as illuminating personality – of De Niro, here as a supporting character, and above all the protagonist, Nobu. Matsuhisa’s character, his temperament, is indeed that of a sensitive artist who has found the perfect calling as a chef, creating moments of sensory pleasure for his clientele.

“In this life,” he says in the documentary, “I want to make everybody around me as happy as possible.”

“He has an open mind and open heart, I would say,” comments Tyrnauer. “He talked about putting heart into it, which could seem like a bit of a cliche, but I think that’s a part of the [Nobu] culture. I think that’s a meme he puts out to his people. And it’s a big staff. He says, ‘Serve with your heart,’ essentially. And if you’ve been in these restaurants, the service is very good. I mean really good. And you feel like there’s a great deal of focus. Again, I think that’s the culture he’s created.”

A ticket to see Nobu will cost you substantially less than a meal at one of Matsuhisa’s restaurants.

“It is a high price point,” the director confirms. “If you paid for dinner at Nobu or Matsuhisa, it puts a dent in the credit card bill. It’s expensive.”

Both a Nobu dining experience and the documentary about him merit savoring. Not to suggest the chef, or anyone for that matter, is perfect. The film reveals a very rare moment as the exacting chef – gasp! – loses total mastery of a strainer.

“When he’s preparing a dish that he’s inventing on camera, he dropped the noodles all over the floor. And I don’t think he was happy he did that while the camera was on him. It’s didn’t him look great, to be honest with you,” Tyrnauer allows. “But for me, that had to go in because it’s a human story. For me, that’s the beautiful part of the film. But making a perfect piece of Nigri sushi with toro is beautiful too.”