Chef Nobu on Pinoy hospitality, meeting Ferran Adria & De Niro’s fave dish
As the song goes, Robert De Niro was waiting … for Nobu. He had to wait four years before the chef would partner with him in the venture that would spawn 36 restaurants in 31 cities.
Chef Nobu Matsuhisa jokes that he did a better job of acting than Robert De Niro in Casino, where he had a cameo as a wealthy high roller.
The Japanese chef, who enjoys the one-name status usually reserved for rock stars and supermodels, was in Manila for a day last week (March 18) to preside over a lavish dinner in the hotel and restaurant that bear his name in the City of Dreams.
Prior to that, however, he served a lunch consisting of Nobu signature dishes to an assembled press eager to pick his brains.
“Bob De Niro’s productions gave me an opportunity to play in his movie,” Nobu says about Casino. “First I say ‘I’m busy, busy, busy’ … finally I did it.”
So, as the song goes, Robert De Niro was waiting … for Nobu.
In the beginning he waited quite a long time before the chef would even agree to partner with him in the venture that would eventually spawn 36 restaurants in 31 cities on five continents.
“The first time he asked me to open a restaurant in New York, I said no because I felt the time wasn’t right,” Nobu recalls. “Four years later he asked again, ‘Come to New York.’ I was surprised because after the first offer I said no, but after waiting four years, what can I do, what can I say? Now I can trust him.”
Joking aside about Casino, chef Nobu knows that acting is De Niro’s domain, and the kitchen is his. “He respects us. He likes food but he never asks, ‘Nobu, can you make this?’ especially when it comes to the menu.”
Though the legendary actor likes to eat, especially when he’s tired, Nobu discloses that De Niro’s not too fond of shellfish, particularly oysters. What he does love is our main dish for lunch, black cod with miso, which also happens to be Nobu’s top seller all over the world. A thick cut of Alaskan black cod marinated in sweetened miso, it’s so fresh and tender it surrenders immediately to my chopsticks. The flesh is juicy and flavorful — rich in umami, which is probably Nobu’s main culinary secret.
“Umami is very important for food,” he insists, citing his use of Parmesan on the baby spinach-dry miso salad that preceded the cod. “I never use Parmesan because cheese is not Japanese food. But I use a little sprinkled with the dressing because of umami.”
He’s also experimenting with freeze-dried miso because “miso and cheese both have umami,” he notes, and drying the miso just intensifies its flavor.
Though the chef’s acting career may be on hold, he hasn’t given up showbiz entirely. Next month he will shoot the last episode of Nobu’s Japan, a five-episode Discovery Channel series where he and a guest chef travel through Japan discovering local ingredients. His guest list reads like a who’s who of celebrity chefs: Jose Andrés, Eric Ripert, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller, whom Nobu says are the best chefs working today. Their restaurants are his favorites.
‘It’s not creation, it’s a happening’
Nobuyuki Matsuhisa was an 18-year-old sushi chef when he moved to Peru to open a sushi bar there. The first time he ate local specialty ceviche, he thought, “Wow.” Inspired, he started merging Peruvian ingredients like cilantro, jalapeño, and chili paste with sashimi and classical Japanese techniques.
“Lots of my signature dishes come from customer ideas,” he admits. “I start to create this way; my yellowtail jalapeño was like a happening.”
The happening went like this: Nobu was in Hawaii, cooking a number of charity dinners using yellowtail. At the end of each dinner, a chef had to make the staff meal with the leftover fish, so one night Nobu was looking through the fridge and found jalapeño and cilantro. Tired of using the usual soy sauce and wasabi, Nobu added the ingredients he’d found to the fish. The daring combination got the staff talking: “Nobu, what is this?”
“It’s not creation, it’s a happening,” he says. “Now these dishes are spread all over the world. Any Japanese restaurant has yellowtail jalapeños. New-style sashimi, soft-shell crab rolls, and lots of Nobu signature dishes come from happening.”
After three years in Peru, the adventurous chef moved to Argentina, back to Japan and then Alaska before settling in Los Angeles and opening his first Stateside restaurant, Matsuhisa in 1987. His novel fusion of Japanese and Peruvian flavors (he prefers to call it “Nobu style”) attracted both foodies and Hollywood celebrities, and it was there he met De Niro. “He understands my philosophy, he supports what I want, so we’re good partners and good friends,” Nobu says.
When chef Nobu met chef Ferran
As pioneering a chef as Nobu was in the ’90s, a lot has changed the culinary landscape since then: Ferran Adria and modern gastronomy, for one. Since Nobu himself is fond of saying, “Food is like fashion,” I ask if he ever feels the need to keep up with the latest trends.
“I know Ferran very well, I was in Madrid Fusion several times,” he replies. “Ferran changed the world, because he doesn’t use much knife. He uses more machines, like a doctor’s office. But people are very much interested in his cooking style. Ferran and I are very good friends. I speak Spanish, too, so very easy to communicate, but it’s a different style of cooking, me and him. But his restaurant’s closed already! I’ve been doing it more than 28 years,” he laughs.
“He loves Nobu,” adds the chef. “He said to me, ‘Nobu, you are the genius because you created new-style sashimi.’”
Winning formula
Our new-style sashimi today is cut from local lapu-lapu, glistening underneath a yuzu-soy sauce and combination of hot sesame and olive oils. Nobu Manila uses a significant number of local ingredients like shrimp, squid, octopus, and yellowfin tuna, according to executive sushi chef Akihisa Kawai. They only fly in what can’t be found here, like Bluefin tuna and yellowtail.
The freshness of the lapu-lapu sashimi is impeccable, enhanced by some julienned ginger, chives, and sesame seeds, and I realize that Nobu doesn’t need to rely on the latest food trends, fireworks or fancy techniques because you don’t mess with a winning formula. In the chef’s own words, “Nobu’s concept is very simple: best product, visually looks beautiful and tastes clean.”
Another secret to success is teamwork, and for Manila Nobu has assembled a crack team of chefs who aren’t afraid to innovate, led by executive chef Zack Hillberry, who has introduced creative elements in the room-service dining like the artisanal Takumi burger (with a tofu-infused bun, crispy shiitakes, foie gras, house-made ketchup and truffle-honey aioli) and, most deliciously, Filipino flavors like tapsilog to the breakfast buffet, as well as stellar a-la-minute items like eggs benedict, green-tea waffles, pain perdu, and bagels and lox — all given a Nobu twist, of course.
Though chef Nobu has a sushi bar at home that he describes as his “playroom,” his tastes remain uncomplicated. He’s not a fan of strange foods like snake soup, and his ultimate comfort food is anything his wife cooks, whether it’s a basic Japanese meal of miso soup, rice and grilled fish, or something more western like pasta.
He didn’t have enough time to check out our local eats, but raved about the Filipinos he’d met. “In Manila the people are so nice and smiling,” he said. “We need hospitality like this.”
He says he has a lot of Filipino chefs at Nobu in New York City, where his head chef is Filipino. “My Filipino chefs cook the staff meal, with a lot of pork.”
Like many visiting foreign chefs before him, he has a hard time wrapping his head around Pinoy flavor combinations like champorado and tuyo. “I never say, ‘No, don’t do this,’ but we have to keep Nobu style.” Meaning, don’t expect any champorado-and-tuyo-inspired chocolate-and-sushi on the menu anytime soon.
“Filipino culture is very interesting, and now I want to learn from it. I’m still learning!”
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Nobu Manila and Nobu Lounge are located on Level 1 of the Nobu Hotel at City of Dreams Manila, Asean Avenue corner Roxas Boulevard, Parañaque. Operating hours are 7 a.m. to 12 a.m. High tea is served at Nobu Lounge from 2-5 p.m. For inquiries and reservations, call 691-2882 and 691-2885.
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Recipe File: Nobu’s Sea Urchin Tempura
Ingredients:
1 sheet dried nori, cut into 6 narrow strips of equal size (only 4 strips are used)
8 shiso leaves
3 1/2 oz. (100g) fresh sea urchin roe
Vegetable oil for deep-frying
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 sudachi citrus, halved
Tempura batter:
1 egg yolk
1 cup (100g) all-purpose (plain) flour
Procedure:
1. Take one strip of nori and put 2 shiso leaves at one end. Put a heaping spoonful of sea urchin roe on the shiso and roll up in the nori. Dab the end of the nori with tempura batter to seal. Repeat for the other 3 strips.
2. Bring about 3 inches (8 cm) of oil in a deep pot to 340-350 F (170-180 C). Dip the rolls whole in tempura batter and deep-fry for up to 3 minutes, until the batter is crisp.
3. Arrange the tempura on a serving dish and serve with sea salt, black pepper and the sudachi citrus halves.
