A Taste for Adventures in Dining

By S. IRENE VIRBILA

Jan. 2, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES RESTAURANT CRITIC

After the ubiquitous Wolfgang Puck, his good friend Nobu Matsuhisa may be Los Angeles’ most recognized / best-known chef. The tall Japanese-born chef, who arrived in L.A. in the 1980s after working for a time in Peru, has appeared more on the E! Channel and in trendy magazines than on cable’s Food Network or Gourmet. He’s appeared in a Gap ad and in one for golf clubs. His myriad fans, drawn mostly from the worlds of fashion and entertainment, are passionately devoted to his bold Japanese fusion and follow him from restaurant to restaurant. Matsuhisa, whose primary home is here, now has restaurants in Beverly Hills, Aspen, New York, London and Tokyo--and has plans to open in Las Vegas and San Francisco in thespring.

Why are his restaurants--called either Matsuhisa or Nobu--so wildly popular? Because his Japanese food is highly original. He’s spiced up Japan’s austere traditional palette of flavors with garlic, chiles, olive oil, even butter, mayonnaise and Russian caviar. Drawing on his travels and his imagination, he’s created a thick book of “special dishes,” which are presented with the playfulness of a Dali or Picasso. He decorates rich, darkly glazed unagi (eel) with a shiso leaf accented with a dab of edible gold leaf, and the eel’s deep-fried spine tied into a jaunty knot. Fresh scallop sashimi is topped with a Peruvian hot sauce called torodito and squid is cut to look like pasta. Eating at Matsuhisa is always an adventure.

When Calendar spoke with him in December, he had arrived from New York the day before, looking fresh and energetic in a starched chef’s jacket, loose cotton chef’s pants in a colorful print, and athletic shoes.

Question: What a schedule you must have--having just opened a second restaurant in New York (Nobu Next Door) and another in Tokyo on the same day last October, plus keeping up with your restaurants in Aspen and London. How do you handle the jet lag?

Answer: From L.A., going to New York and to London, I never have jet lag. Going from L.A. to Japan, it’s a little different. But coming back to L.A. from Japan is no problem. If I keep traveling in a counterclockwise direction, I don’t have much jet lag. It’s the other direction that’s difficult.

Q: And now you have restaurants on different continents.

A: Actually, I’m going to Tokyo next week again. But before I opened the Tokyo restaurant, I used to spend two weeks in Los Angeles, a week in New York, a week a month in London--that was my schedule. But now I’ve added Tokyo and I have to go to Tokyo for a week. And the season at Aspen is starting up again, so I’m going to Aspen after Christmas for three to four days.

Q: The new Nobu Next Door (which the New York Times restaurant critic rated three stars) is more casual?

A: Yes, open late, more casual. We take reservations only for more than five people, so we have a lot of walk-ins. It’s sushi, noodles, whole fish fried, steamed, grilled, and it has a raw bar, too. But I have the same problem with this restaurant as the others [when] I’d ask people, “How would you like a live fish?” And recently a TV station in New York asked me to show how I slice a live fish. In Japan, live fish sashimi is very popular. You quickly filet the fish while it’s still alive and then put it back together again.

Q: I know in Japan, when they do it, the fish is still gasping for air when the platter is set in front of the customer . . .

A: Some of my customers eat it and they love it.

Q: So you do that at Nobu? Because I’ve never seen you do that here.

A: Not any more. Lot of complaints. Half the people like it; half don’t. I get a lot of phone calls about it. In Japan, though, it’s no problem because live fish means the best fish because it’s the freshest. [After the television show aired in New York, Matsuhisa says, someone called his restaurant with a bomb threat.] In New York now, I’m serving live spiny lobster sashimi with the live head on the plate. A lot of people love it.

Q: It’s an extreme experience, especially for Americans.

A: The food business is just like the fashion business, where the cuts and the colors change every season. I like to try something new with my food every season, too.

Q: But when you have so many restaurants, how do you introduce that element of creativity?

A: Matsuhisa [his original Beverly Hills restaurant on La Cienega’s restaurant row] is going to be 12 years old in January. The chef in Tokyo came from the London restaurant, and he knows my food and philosophy. We talk every day to discuss the food.

Q: Most of the superstar chefs who have a slew of restaurants are Western chefs. They sometimes have trouble finding really good, experienced people who will stay. In your case, because the restaurant is Japanese and it’s based on sushi, you have to necessarily draw from a different talent pool. Are most of your chefs Japanese?

A: Except in London, where the executive chef there is an Englishman. I sent him to Japan for two weeks because he’d never been there, and I wanted him to understand the Japanese culture, the Japanese market system, the Japanese way of doing business. But yes, staffing is the most difficult.

Q: To find chefs who are not only skilled, but also creative?

A: At the beginning, I was at the Tokyo restaurant for a month. In New York, when Nobu first opened, for two months for training. In London, one month. In all my restaurants, I stay as long as possible at the beginning. I can’t do it all myself--it has to be teamwork. Matsuhisa is 12 years old now, and I have chefs here who have been working with me for six or seven years, some even 10, so this restaurant is just like my home. Coming back here is very comfortable. And most of the people who come in already know my philosophy and my food. Cooking is my life, and I enjoy watching my chefs grow. By having so many restaurants, I can give a chance to them, too.

Q: How is your nontraditional food being received in Japan?

A: I had the chance to come to Tokyo, but I was worried about it, because Japan is very traditional. For me, the United States is the best country. In Japan, they don’t like somebody doing something new. Here, because it’s America, which is a very generous country, they accept new things. America has given me the chance to explore new ideas and I feel very lucky because of it. Nobu Tokyo is my challenge, especially right now because not only Japan’s but the Asian economy is not so good.

Q: One of the things that makes your restaurants so special is the quality of the fish. Is there a limited amount of great fish around? Do you foresee it as a problem in the future?

A: Actually, before I opened the London Nobu, I was worried because people had told me the fish wasn’t good or very exciting. But I went to the fish market in London and found great lobsters, oysters, scampi, scallops, sardines, octopus, tuna--all the fish is very nice. I was so surprised. And I’m so happy with the fish in London.

Q: But do you think that will be more difficult, because already there’s more demand than supply?

A: For example, now, the bluefin tuna is very hard to get, because supplies are limited. But now, they’ve started farming it in Spain, so I think maybe in 10 years, chefs will be using much more farmed fish than wild fish. Also, 10 years ago when I opened Matsuhisa, for example, asparagus we could only get in the summertime, just the local kind, but now (and also shiitake mushroom) in winter here, in South America and New Zealand, it’s summer, and we can bring produce or fish from there the next day. The world is not like it was 10 years ago. And 10 years from now, it will be changed even more.

Q: Very little of the fish you serve is local, in fact. It wasn’t caught right off the California coast.

A: It comes from East Coast, from Alaska, from Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Of course, there is some local fish like Santa Barbara shrimp, and scorpion crab and squid--but I just got in some squid from Australia this morning.

Q: And so the chef today can buy all over the world essentially, and have it arrive by air the next day?

A: In the next 10 years, I think this will be so more and more.

Q: Where do you see the restaurant business in Los Angeles going in the next 10 years?

A: All I know is the restaurant business. What I see from my restaurant here is that restaurants are drawing on an international clientele. I now have customers from all over the world.

Q: You never dreamed when you opened this place that soon you’d have restaurants in such far-flung locales, did you? And wasn’t it Robert De Niro who made it happen?

A: After Matsuhisa had been open for one year, he asked me if I wanted to come to New York and open a restaurant with him. He took me to see the building he had under construction where he now has Tribeca Grill, and he explained his dream to me. But I had to say, “no thank you, I just opened this restaurant, and it’s not organized yet. I can’t do it right now.” After four years, he called me again at home, and said, “Nobu, can you come now?” I felt my staff had grown up, and that now I might be able to consider it. Later, he called to say, “Nobu, it’s time to come now.” And so we found the location and then we started.

And the rest is, as they say, history.

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Crossroads

The daily Calendar section will continue through Jan. 7 its series of interviews, conducted by Times critics, with leaders in the arts and entertainment.

MONDAY

Movies: Steven Spielberg

TUESDAY

Classical music: MaryAnn Bonino

WEDNESDAY

Television: Jeff Greenfield

THURSDAY

Jazz: Tommy LiPuma

FRIDAY

Dance: Garth Fagan

TODAY

Restaurants: Nobu Matsuhisa