Nobu Matsuhisa reveals how Lima, Peru shaped the global Nobu restaurant empire

Japanese chef, restaurateur and the culinary world’s true mononymous rockstar — Nobu Matsuhisa — opened his first sushi restaurant in Lima, Peru, in 1973.

Matsuhisa was just 24. And while that debut, Matsuei, didn’t last, his intriguing entwinement of Japanese touch with local South American produce would inform all that came next.

Today, the Nobu empire covers more than 55 restaurants across 24 countries. At 76, Matsuhisa has not let age weary him.

A married father of two adult children, his appetite for travel and global expansion remains forever firm, regularly flying from Japan to the USA and Australia, as he did recently to welcome incoming Nobu Crown Melbourne executive chef Celestin Gaty.

Here, he speaks to ROAM about his love for Lima.

“Lima changed my life and cooking forever — in many ways it’s the reason Nobu Australia exists today. I first went to there 45 years ago. I was working at a restaurant in Japan and a regular customer, a Japanese-Peruvian man whose family had emigrated to Peru generations before, asked me to go there and open a restaurant with him.

Read the latest edition of ROAM here. He kept coming to my work for three years until he convinced me to give it a go. It was a very difficult decision to leave Japan, but I had always dreamed of travelling.

I had no idea at the time how much that decision would shape everything that came after, not just my cooking, but every Nobu restaurant I opened around the world, including Crown Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

I remember seeing old photographs of my father with locals in the Philippines — one of the few we had of him. My dad died in a car accident when I was eight. But this memory of this photograph stood out to me and coincided with me feeling I needed to do as he did — to travel and mix with another culture other than my own. I was raised by my mother and two older brothers.

I encountered ceviche for the first time in Lima — fresh seafood marinated in lemon juice so that it is ‘cooked’ by the sauce and turns completely white. The white juice left over at the end is called leche de tigre, or tiger milk, and it’s highly enjoyable.

The first time I ate ceviche, gave me the instant feeling of ‘wow’. In Japan, we use soy sauce and wasabi; in Peru they use lemon juice, garlic and chili paste in its place. Essentially, it’s the same fish, but served in a completely different way. This first experience opened my eyes in understanding there is more freedom in cooking.

As a trained sushi chef, I understood how to work with raw fish, so something about this technique felt very natural to me, but also completely new. The flavours, the ingredients, the way Peruvians approach the sea, it all stayed with me. There are dishes we serve at Nobu that remind me of Lima.

It was my regular customer in Japan and his family, who welcomed me to Lima — they introduced me to the city, the culture and the food. Peru will always feel like a second home because of them. It’s a place I am always happy to return to.

It is one of the great culinary cities of the world now and Australia reminds me a little of that spirit found in South America, the produce is world-class. The Skull Island prawns, the southern rock lobster, the Abrolhos Island scallops, these are ingredients that any chef in the world would be grateful to cook with.

Peru is where the Nobu style began. My upbringing might have been in Japan, but it was in my first restaurant in Peru where I could experiment with Peruvian flavours and techniques alongside Japanese ones.

The whitefish tiradito is a perfect example — it’s a Japanese technique, sliced and presented on the plate, but instead of wasabi I used local chilli, sea salt and citrus. Sashimi was never like that until my Peru experience. People sometimes call my food fusion, but I don’t like that word. Fusion is confusion. It is simply Nobu style that was born in Lima.crownresorts.com.au