Tribeca Festival : Q&A with Director Matt Tyrnauer, Founder Robert De Niro, Chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa

 

 

Q : What a movie, what a life you have led. 

Nobu Matsuhisa: You know my view, and as you see in the movie, I’m so glad that I didn’t give up on my life. I’d like to say thank you to all my partners, all my teams, including my wife there, [and] my kids. I so much appreciate all the support. Thank you very much.

Q : We see so many things in this film; there is really something for everybody. We see the development of an incredibly creative artist. We see a love story, well, actually, we see a couple of love stories. We see a business story about the development of a leader and the building of a brand. We see an important food story about how much restaurants have changed, and you have been so important in that.

We also see an amazing story about resilience and overcoming failure, which is very heartening to a lot of people who see how you just didn’t give up. But I wanted to ask Matt, this is a very ambitious movie. What made you tackle all of these subjects?

Matt Tyrnauer: There was a lot. You touched on all the themes that I love about it. I just wanted to talk about resilience. I knew about Nobu, ate at Matsuhisa, since I grew up in LA. I knew all those basic things. I knew about the Peru part, but I didn’t know about it in depth.

What really struck me and bowled me over was that Nobu wasn’t a success until he was in his 40s. Not only did he not have that success until he was in his 40s, he had spectacular failures before then. For me, the resilience was just extraordinary. Especially in this time when, I call this thing the Zuckerberg syndrome, which is, we’re supposed to be one foot out of Harvard at 20 and be a billionaire.

It doesn’t work that way really. Resilience and having failures early in life, even early in midlife, and coming back from it, seeing that and Nobu’s example of that really moved me. I wanted to capture that in the film.

Q : You did. And it’s even more remarkable when you think of it, that you come out of a very traditional culture, Nobu, a culture where innovation has not been prized. You go to Tokyo, you find the best French restaurant you’ve ever been to and the best Italian restaurant [and more like that]. But for people, perfect is one thing, but they don’t innovate.

What’s so extraordinary, it’s not like other people weren’t mixing cultures, and in L.A. we had La Petite Chaya where they were doing it… But nobody did what you did. Nobody took other cultures and pulled it into a traditional Japanese framework. It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of that and the impact of that on how we eat now.

Nobu Matsuhisa: Even in Japan, there’s Japanese food, Italian food, French, Chinese, all the cultures of the food has war. Now, food is more international, so even French chefs are using more kombu [kelp], umami [savory tastes], and dashi [broth for miso etc]. I started using caviar, truffles, and all the different ingredients [from many countries]. People in each developed country, their chefs start using [these various flavors and ingredients] . It used to be a high wall [between] each culture’s food. Now that is very low. Now, more food is international.

 It means my way. I like to cook to do [whatever will make]customers happy. I’ve [been]cooking all my life, a chef all my life, so I start using all the different types of ingredients. I get inspiration from Bob too. Bob loves the food, and he came to my restaurant. Bob said, “Anything you want. I like anything you want.” I like to try something different to make Bob happy.

For Bob, one day, I could create for him what, how can I say, it’s like, being food happy and free. When I’m traveling, I can learn from the different cultures: the food, the culture of the ingredients, the culture of the food, that depends on the chefs. My normal style is to create a base, how to make the guest happy. I’m not smart enough, not very complicated, I like to keep it simple, the food clean, good quality, and tasty. So sorry about that.

©Courtesy of Vertical

Q : Bob, that was really prescient of you. You recognized his genius and creativity before almost anyone. How did you go to Nobu, or to Matsuhisa for the first time? 

Robert De Niro: Roland Jaffe, the director I worked with when I did “The Mission”, he told me that when I was in LA, to come to this restaurant. And I went. After a while there, I said to Nobu, If you ever want to open a restaurant in New York just let me know. I said, this, to me, it was a no-brainer. whether it would actually happen, but I had just opened The Grill in New York.

Q : Why did you open The Grill? Why did you go into the restaurant business? 

Robert De Niro:  said, “If we’re going to have the [Tribeca] Film Center, we might as well have a restaurant in it where people would want to congregate and meet.” Drew Nieporent had a restaurant, Montrachet, which was just a couple of blocks from there. I said, “This would be a good thing. Drew would do it.” You can walk a couple of blocks between his restaurant and the film center so I asked Drew to do it, and he did. Then I said, “Well, I had some experience, and I just told Nobu, if you want to come to New York, let me know.” That’s how it started.

Nobu Matsuhisa: Can I comment? He lived across the street from the Nobu restaurant, right? In Tribeca, he would just eat Nobu’s food any time. So he is like an invite to open the restaurant in New York. It is my turning point. And I appreciate that, that’s why he invited me to come to New York. first offer, I said, no, thank you. But, you know, after four years, he still kept asking me to come to New York. At this moment, I can trust these people.

That’s why [I decided it was] time for me to go, and I trust Bob. That’s why we started Nobu. Then I [started to accept] the challenge. He’s been my support. All of my partners supported [the decision] to make the beautiful Nobu concept. I’m here in New York City, and  and I almost cried [when I watched] my movie again. I have to say thank you to everyone.

Q : When he asked you to come to New York, did you have any idea that it was going to be such a huge success? Matsuhisa was [the place], the food was spectacular, and celebrities went there, but it was a modest restaurant in the way that it was. Did you know that you were going to have this fabulous restaurant? 

Nobu Matsuhisa: I only worry about the New York Times food critic. [audience laughter]

Q : It was also an amazing time in New York because in L.A., a lot of people were eating, and had been eating Japanese food for a long time. Japantown was very convenient to downtown, and sushi was not new. I was shocked when I came to New York in ’93 and discovered that most people in New York weren’t eating sushi.

Nobu, you didn’t just bring your creativity, you also brought in that new relationship. The relationship between a sushi chef and a customer is very different from the relationship between a French chef and a customer.

You were getting the food directly from the hands of the chef. New Yorkers weren’t used to that. It was a very new thing, and I think that’s one of the things that really changed food in America, that difference in the connection between the kitchen and the customer, which you were smart enough to know, which I just learned in this, when you were talking to David Rockwell, the sushi bar is very important.

Nobu Matsuhisa: My food is New York. I opened in 1994, with very traditional Japanese food, and very cultured, very old Japanese , but my way, It’s more like black cod, rock shrimps and ceviche from Peru, a lot more different [than typical Japanese restaurants]. It’s so funny, and this is a true story. Before I opened Nobu in New York, I went to a couple Japanese restaurants, to say hi, now it’s Nobu opening in Tribeca. Some restaurant chefs…

You know what they said to me? “Oh, congratulations, see you after six months.” They meant, “okay, let’s see if six months later, Nobu restaurant is not there anymore. But after 30 years, and I don’t want to say that we changed it, but people love our food, people accept good food, and though Nobu is not the only restaurant, we not only have good food, but we have good service. With this combination, we changed the image of a Japanese restaurant.

Q : When I went to be the editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine, and S.I. Newhouse wanted to give a party to welcome me, where did he choose? Nobu.

Nobu Matsuhisa: Thank you.

Q : It couldn’t be any restaurant in New York, and that’s why he thought it was the most exciting restaurant in the city. We got requests all the time to get people into restaurants, that was part of my assistant’s function, basically to get reservations for people. Important people in New York would call her, and Nobu was where everybody wanted to go, and nobody could get in there. There was an excitement about what was going on in that restaurant.

I want to move on to something else, because it’s an important part of the film, and that’s the hotel issue. There are a lot of chefs, and you’ve got two of the most important [in the film], who have hundreds of, well, not hundreds, but, Jean-Georges has something like 200 restaurants across the world, and Wolfgang [Puck] has as well, I don’t know how many, but they don’t have is hotels. The idea of putting people in the Nobu sphere — which is not a term I’ve ever heard before — but I imagine after this film, it will become a term. That’s really [a compliment], did it scare you at all?

Nobu Matsuhisa: Hotel ideas come from the mob [audience laughs].

©Courtesy of Vertical

Q : But I mean,  probably, did he had to talk you into it?

Nobu Matsuhisa: Do you remember the beginning? Our partner Bob was talking about, let’s open the Nobu Hotel. Come on to the hotel. We have a [great] restaurant business. But I was so much, “Oh my gosh, what can I do?” But, Bob has great ideas, and then, we finally decided to go to make a Nobu Hotel. When we started the project, the first hotel was in Las Vegas, right? Over 10 years now, we have 20 hotels right, and always like names, and hotels, but finally it’s like with the Del Coronado, we opened anyway. It’s in the movie, like Meier was talking about. Bob said, “What’s in it for us?” Meier said, money. But already, we opened at the Del Coronado a couple months ago. And it was a big success. [audience laughs]

Robert De Niro: We were being asked to open restaurants in many places, but then it was certain hotels like we went to San Diego to the Hard Rock, and they started asking me questions about the Hard Rock.  I sincerely said, I don’t know, we’re here for Nobu, not for the Hard Rock. Trevor Orwell, who’s now our CEO of the hotel, said, you said, I didn’t realize it then, but I guess on the one hand. I was saying it then why are we not doing it ourselves? I spoke to some people who were in the hotel business who were partners with us, saying, why do you want to do hotels for? I’m saying, “Well, why are you doing it?” If you’re doing it, I don’t say that to them. I don’t want to be rude.

I said, “Well then we should at least try it. Whatever partner we have that wants to do a restaurant, whatever part of the world. If it’s strategically good for us to put a hotel there, let’s say we only will do it if it’s a hotel, a restaurant and all that, and whatever else [that fits] the building complex. That’s how it started.

Q : It’s so hard getting consistency in a restaurant, as we saw in the film, it’s really difficult. 

Robert De Niro: We had to start it. We had to try.

Nobu Matsuhisa: A lot of any kind of business, you have to make a good team, and a strong team, you know. The stronger the leadership makes the teams [work]. So we made this education and training for the next generation. That’s why  my first New York restaurant is over the last 30 years, so we have great teams and teams make any business keep growing. This I have known, so this makes the New York restaurant [so successful].

Q : I love the idea of a Nobu sphere, and I imagine that other chefs are going to do this, right? I’m amazed that Wolfgang hasn’t yet because he’s…

Robert De Niro: The thing is, the great thing that we had is that the food was so special and great. We had that in the hotel. Other companies want to do it, but they own different things. It’s not food. We had the food. What better thing to have, and what better way for a hotel to draw a following than the great food that Nobu does.

Q l: Absolutely. [big round of applause] I think that one of the things that really makes this film so wonderful is that there are these love stories. I find the relationship between the two of you kind of like a love story. You’re very protective of Nobu in a way that’s wonderful. As we heard, money has never been your driving force. It’s about, “I want to feed people. I want to do the food I want to do,” and Bob seems to really want to protect [that idea]. As you got bigger and bigger and bigger, he’s sitting there going, “No, no, no, it’s not about the money. It’s about doing it right.”

Robert De Niro: If you do it right, and you do it with those intentions first, the money will come, Maybe it won’t, but you can’t do it the other way around and expect… I don’t see it that way, and that’s how it’s always been — that’s the approach. That’s why I was saying, “Why are we doing these things within the situation of the film? It was, wait a minute, we’re expanding a lot, and it’s very, very important, you have to be careful with what you have. You can’t dilute or minimize what you have, or the brand, if you want to call it that. You’ve got to be careful, and always have to be careful. Nobu’s the center of it all, and he creates that. It’s just great, and we support it, but the key to everything is that you have to maintain that quality.

Q l: Can you maintain this punishing travel schedule? How long can you do that? 

Nobu Matsuhisa: I like to try to rest, but every year [we’re] opening a new restaurant, and still, every year, traveling more and more. Still, I’m a lucky person because I keep healthy. Of course, I do a lot of exercise and [work on] keeping my health, but it’s great [to have partners] who understand what we want. Bob never complained that I don’t buy expensive fish. [audience laughs] It’s like I say again, I build the teams. I travel with the teams. It used to be myself. Now, traveling with the teams in support of me, I’m very comfortable. I travel more than I used to, but I’m much more comfortable than before, so I’m not complaining. Maybe my wife complains about traveling too much.

Q : I’m sure. But we see in the film that even with the people who are the executive chefs in your restaurants, they’re not doing it exactly the way that you want them to do it, and as you build more and more hotels, I imagine you’re developing people who can take over for you, but there’s only one you. 

Nobu Matsuhisa: It’s not always my names, but each chef, each restaurant has an all-star chef in New York, in London, in Tokyo, Australia. But it’s impossible, I cannot handle everything, The quality [has to there] in every Nobu restaurant, so some of Nobu’s experienced chefs will be there. Then they do, like a head chef or executive chef, they control the quality. That’s why more restaurants are much more comfortable than before. I cannot handle 100% to my satisfaction, so that’s why my older teams control quality, service, and communications. Also now, with AI and new technologies, it’s easier to communicate throughout the world, at same time.

Q : Matt, what made you want to do this film? 

Matt Tyrnauer: I look for worlds. That’s one of the great parts of my job, I get to be a resident alien on a different planet, and this is planet Nobu. For more than a year with a crew, we followed him around and kind of infiltrated [his world]. This is a cinema verite film in large part, so we had to make ourselves semi-invisible, and become part of the family, and this was perfect for that.

This is a story people think they knew because they knew the name “Nobu.” They might have experienced the restaurant, but they didn’t really know the depth and the whole history of the story, so that was great, and having the access was great.

I’ve made a few films. My first film was about the designer Valentino, and this world reminded me of that a little bit, because it was an empire built around the artistry of one person, that started as a cottage industry, basically, and the art was the center of it. Then it grew, and the work family was coherent, and supportive of each other. The partnership, the love story, and the business [portrayed in that film of] Valentino, was taught at Harvard, at NYU Business School. It wasn’t made as a business movie, but the professors there saw those ingredients that could make a successful company.

Now, many years later, in making this film, I see something very similar — to the credit of Bob and Nobu, and everyone else, Meir Teper and Hiro Tahara who are the core group, They let us in, and kind of forgot we were there. I think in the board meeting, it was rather unbridled, and no one told me to erase that particular data card. They let me do what I want, and I had the final cut on the film. It was a perfect scenario for me.

Q : How much input did they all have into the film? 

Matt Tyrnauer: None. [audience in awe]They didn’t see it until it came out, at the first festival, they never saw a cut. That’s the way I like it.

Q l: Wow. That’s impressive, and they all signed on for that. 

Matt Tyrnauer: He called me three times with no critique, I was shocked by it. [audience laughter] I can say that now, perhaps.

©Courtesy of Vertical

if you like the article, share your thoughts below!

Check out more of Nobuhiro’s articles. 

Here’s the trailer of the film.