IN 1997, when Nobu opened in the Metropolitan restaurant in London, hardly anyone went to it. I was staying in an apartment in Hertford Street, just 200 metres from the corner of Old Park Lane where Nobu was situated. I had dined in his restaurants in Beverly Hills and in New York, had been dazzled, and couldn�t believe my luck that I could walk in unannounced without a reservation and dine off Nobu�s most famous dishes. What was much more exciting was that after lunch, I used to hang around till the restaurant emptied, and Nobu came out with his staff and ate with them informally. Usually snacking on Tiradito and anticucho. I approached him, he was friendly, and so began a long series of conversations about his life, philosophy of cooking, and his techniques. I photographed him. I considered him my friend. (He was once lunching with one of his daughters, who lives in London, and he invited me to join them. I left discreetly after a few minutes, thrilled to bits, at such an intimate privilege.)

Nobu�s is the story of a man who struggled unremittingly for the first 35 years of his life: dishwasher and cleaner for three years in a sushi restaurant in Tokyo, going at 5 in the morning with the owner to carry the heavy fish from Tsukiji Market. (�So heavy, I thought my arms and hands would stretch and fall off!�) And finish the day washing up at 1 a.m. Day in and day out for three years this routine did not change; not once was he allowed to make sushi, his passion and obsession. But he watched everything with laser like intensity and learnt about knives and fish and cutting one with the other. (�I can tell the freshness of seafood at a glance now.�)

After three years of this he moved to Peru at the age of 24, at the instance of a Japanese of Peruvian descent, to start a restaurant. He had to be very creative, making up for the lack of Japanese ingredients, being innovative with the unusual fish, working relentlessly to present mouth wateringly original tastes and textures and flavours, till news of his unique dishes spread and even the Japanese Imperial family came to dine at his restaurant.

But then his partner objected to Nobu�s lavish spending on the finest ingredients, on a high staff to customer ratio, and said, �Cut back costs. Watch the bottom line.� Nobu�s only dream was to cook with so much heart (kokoro) and intensity, to make his customers happy, that cutting costs and compromising on quality was completely alien to him. They split, and Nobu headed for Buenos Aires in Argentina. This is a meat oriented country, steaks being the most important dish. Nobu was a seafood person. After a year of barely surviving, he headed back for Japan, a failure in his own eyes.

Soon after he was persuaded to move to Alaska to start another restaurant. He borrowed heavily, virtually built the restaurant with his own hands, and when it opened, he and his staff worked non-stop for 50 days. The first day off was Thanksgiving. That night the restaurant burnt down. All Nobu�s dreams went up in flames. By now he was heavily in debt, with a wife and a two year old daughter. He brooded for days and nights, contemplating suicide. It was only the thought of his baby daughter�s innocent smiling face which kept him going. She used to climb onto his lap, delighted that he was at home for a change!

Nine years after the disaster in Alaska, Nobu opened in Los Angeles. Nobu�s full name is Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, and he called his restaurant �Matsuhisa�. It was in Beverly Hills. Nobu�s only passion was to cook in such a way that his customers went away pleased. He gave me two examples. Once a customer ordered sashimi (fresh flounder) and sent it back: she couldn�t eat raw fish. Not wanting to send away an unhappy customer, he looked around, saw some heated olive oil in a pan. He drizzled it over the paper thin slices of flounder, mixed with sesame oil, after adding slivers of raw ginger, and finally ponzu sauce. The result was a half cooked fish. New Style Sashimi, which was to take the Japanese culinary world (and Leonardo DiCaprio) by storm, was born.

On another occasion, he created the soft shell crab roll. �Soft shell crabs are best eaten fried. I experimented with different cooking methods, but it didn�t work as well as frying in oil. One day a customer asked me to make a soft shell crab roll. I had never tried it before. As a chef I take my customers� whims seriously. Rolling the crab in vinegared rice alone was not interesting, so I added avocado, flying fish roe, asatsuki chives, and sesame seeds.

Finally I wrapped one long strip of cucumber outside the rice. The lovely translucent green gave it a fresh feeling, while the taste and texture of the hot soft shell crab, and the bursting crunch of the flying fish roe and sesame seeds on the inside. Another world famous delicacy was born! Nobu found that everyone seems to like the rich flavour of the sea bass from Chile, a fish with a high fat content such as salmon and black cod. He discovered its succulence when he saw a fellow chef cooking it at a charity function. �It was like an epiphany.� Nobu added his own inimitable touches, and his Chilean Sea Bass with Nobu�s Black Bean Sauce is a favourite at each one of his restaurants around the world.

So is his Black Cod in Miso Sauce, the most immitated of his creations by other chefs (unsuccessfully, like Kakori Kababs). When asked whether he was not worried about his chefs stealing his recipe and selling it to a competitor, Nobu laughed, �I buy a million tonnes annually of this fish from one supplier who catches it off the long coast of Chile. He is not going to jeopardise his business with me to supply small quantities to others.� And, �You can have my recipe. But you must also have my kokoro!� This dish is De Niro�s and my favourite.

Nobu is now acknowledged as not only one of the 10 greatest chefs in the world by his peers, but also the most successful restaurateur in the world. Nobu first became famous in America when Robert de Niro, Sylvester Stallone, and Sharon Stone were seen dining in his restaurant on the same evening, at separate tables. He was flooded with customers. �Matsuhisa� went onto the New York Time�s list of 10 best restaurants worldwide, others called it the �Best Japanese Restaurant in America�. More awards followed. But Nobu was scared of opening another restaurant (memories of Alaska).

It was one of his most ardent fans, Robert de Niro, who lived in New York, and dined at Nobu�s every time he was in Hollywood, who finally prevailed on him to open a restaurant in New York. De Niro actually bought a building for the purpose, and flew Nobu over to see it. However, Nobu mulled over this for as much as four years before he agreed.

Nobu in New York was a runaway success. His association with Robert de Niro became legendary. Then came London. When Giorgio Armani told Nobu, �Start a restaurant on my premises in Milan. I can�t keep flying to London all the time to eat your food,� Nobu went ahead. Then Paris, that most fastidious and chauvinistic culinary capital, which Nobu conquered last year. As of now he has as many as 13 restaurants world wide. But what seems to give Nobu the most joy was opening a restaurant in Tokyo. It celebrated its third anniversary in October last year. As customary now, it is a phenomenal success. His mother, still alive and healthy at 90, used to weep each time Nobu went abroad, she thought she would never see him again, that he would die destitute in a foreign country. Now she smiles. Nobu flies to Tokyo every month, to see her, to see one of his two daughters, and to oversee his restaurant. He has finally come home, the hero with a thousand new recipes for Japanese food, and also the one recipe, the oldest known to humanity, the recipe for success on a staggering scale, imbued and impregnated in every sinew and cell of his brain and body.

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