Master of fusion
Japanese celebrity chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa is expanding into hotels. He tells Tracey Furniss about his life, and how Peruvian dishes influenced his famous cuisine
At 64, Nobuyuki "Nobu" Matsuhisa is thriving. Having gone into partnership with actor Robert De Niro, the Japanese celebrity chef now has 26 Nobu and five Matsuhisa restaurants across the globe. In April, he opened his first Nobu Hotel in Las Vegas and plans several more similar projects, "including in [Saudi] Arabia, Philippines, Chicago and Miami", he says.
"We started Nobu Hotel because my business partner, Robert De Niro, has his own hotel, Greenwich Hotel in New York, and we also have 31 restaurants, [many of which are] inside hotels," Matsuhisa says. "We sent hotel project teams all over the world [to find] somebody interested to invest in Nobu Hotels - then, in Las Vegas, we found it with Caesars Palace."
Casino moguls Lawrence Ho and James Packer are investing in Nobu Manila Hotel, which will be part of The Belle Grande Manila Bay Casino and Resort in Entertainment City Manila - and, of course, the Nobu restaurant will be a main feature.
Despite the expansion of his restaurant chain, Matsuhisa is still a chef. It was always his dream to be one, he says. "Nowadays, kids want to be baseball players, actors and singers, but me, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a sushi chef. I never changed my dream. I wanted to be cooking all my life."
His first memory of cooking was when he was about 10. "My father passed away when I was eight, so then I stayed with my mother," Matsuhisa recalls. "My mother always stayed in the kitchen, so she showed me how to make miso soup - so this was my first experience."
When he was 18, Matsuhisa became a sushi chef at a family-run restaurant in Tokyo. He lived and worked there while learning his skills. "I stayed with the family; [the father] was my mentor, he taught me how to choose fish, clean the fish, slice the fish, and how to make sushi."
After mastering traditional sushi making, he moved to Peru at age 23 and picked up new ideas. "My first impression of Peru was that there was [a lot of] fresh fish," Matsuhisa says. "There were many Japanese people [living there], so people ate sashimi - sashimi needs soya sauce and wasabi. [But the] first time I ate in Peru, we never used soya sauce, just fresh fish, sliced onion, chilli and garlic, and cilantro. It was cooked with lemon juice, so I was surprised … I was impressed with this type of food, I was inspired by Peruvian food."