A Glorious Portrait of a Japanese Chef and His Empire

The subject’s fascination can take a documentary a long way. That’s what Matt Tynor’s latest project is all about. lettera dazzling portrait Matsuhisa NobuThe Japanese chef is best known for his empire of luxury sushi restaurants (and more recently, hotels), where guests can enjoy a variety of dishes inspired by his Japanese roots and early Peruvian cuisine. letteradapted from Matsuhisa’s memoir of the same name, Tyrnauer (also Telluride This year Cavill: Winning is everything, stupid) links the name of this global genius to a character.

letter is a straightforward, admiring portrait. The film may appeal to fans of the chef (especially as this year marks the 30th anniversary of the first Nobu restaurant), but it may not fully satisfy the culinary curious. Compared to David Gelb’s glossy documentary, the film is less about process and more about scope. God of Sushi, letter looks at Matsuhisa as a person and a brand, offering some biographical information and insights into the chef’s steadily growing empire.

Tiernar Shape letter Built around a lengthy interview with Matsuhisa, he generously recounts his early years growing up in Japan, his desire to become a sushi chef, and the small successes and big failures of his early entrepreneurial career. These conversations, along with interviews with Matsuhisa’s wife, Yoko, and two daughters, Junko and Yoshiko, form a relatively candid biography that showcases Matsuhisa’s personality. His humor—marked by dad jokes and deadpan delivery—vivifies his storytelling and makes the first half of the documentary feel more intimate. Stories about Matsuhisa’s formative years reveal a childhood marked by premature sadness and a fascination with making sushi. He likens the process of watching chefs carefully press fillets of fish onto rice and serve them to customers to watching actors on stage. For Matsuhisa, sushi is more than just a delicacy; it’s a performance.

When the chef talks about the inspiration for popular dishes like cod miso or kitchen experiments, letter approaches its full potential as a documentary. Anecdotes about Matsuhisa’s early years in Peru, where he first encountered cilantro, and his restaurant ventures in Anchorage and later in Los Angeles, confirm the creative thread behind his multimillion-dollar business. These moments add to the portrait’s evidence of strategy at work by the artist. These are the moments when we get to witness genius firsthand, rather than just hear about it from the film’s various talking heads. There is a striking scene near the end of the documentary, when Nobu makes the rare decision to entertain close friends at his home in Japan. Here, the chef’s theory that making sushi is a performance is distilled into action. While placing chunks of eel on a plate, Matsuhisa entertains his guests with jokes and stories about his early culinary career and his more recent life as an international celebrity.

Matsuhisa has become a star. Tyrnauer has contributed a lot. letter Running a global conglomerate. Nobu has become a luxury item with dozens of restaurants and several hotels around the world. Tyrnauer accompanies the chef to his various restaurants, always keeping it private and doing little business, focusing on Nobu Los Cabos and Nobu London. He also attends board meetings with Matsuhisa and Nobu co-founders Robert De Niro and Meir Teper, where the three discuss expansion deals and visions for the brand’s future. The film is made very directly, focusing more on messaging than style scoring.

Each of Matsuhisa’s restaurants adheres to the Nobu way—intimate luxury, quality food—while also using local ingredients to reflect cultural needs. Tyrnauer interviews writers such as Ruth Reichl and chefs such as Wolfgang Puck to help paint a picture of the chef’s impact on the culinary world. Some of this material is introduced and abandoned at a rapid pace, in contrast to the steady pace established in the biographical sections.

With so much to say and such flattering undertones, the documentary mostly avoids areas that could cause tension. When the company culture is described as family-like, questions are raised about labor practices, including some Recent litigationwere not resolved. The disagreement between De Niro and Tepper over the direction of the company—expanding quickly in pursuit of capital, or moving slowly to maintain high standards—was observed but not evaluated. letter It works best as a primer, a tasting menu of all things Nobu, including the people and brand of Nobu.