From Tokyo to Lima to the 23rd Floor
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Nobuyuki Matsuhisa was eight years old when his father died. He grew up in Saitama, Japan, raised by his mother, and found his way into the discipline of Tokyo sushi kitchens while he was still a teenager. By the time he was twenty-four, he had left Japan for Peru.
He went because he was invited. A regular customer at the Tokyo restaurant where he worked, a Peruvian of Japanese descent, asked him to open a place in Lima. Matsuhisa arrived with his training, his technique, and a problem. The ingredients he knew from home did not exist in South America. No familiar fish. No dashi stock the way he made it. No shortcuts.
So he improvised. He folded Peruvian citrus into Japanese preparations. He used local chillies where he would have used wasabi. He discovered that if you stopped insisting a dish had to be one thing, it could become something better. Japanese precision met South American soul. The cooking that followed him out of Lima and eventually into restaurants on five continents started here, at the point where he ran out of ingredients and found a new language instead.
The first Nobu opened in Tribeca, New York, in 1994. His partners were Robert De Niro, Drew Nieporent, and Meir Teper. The restaurant changed the way people understood Japanese food in the West. Black cod in miso became one of the most imitated dishes of the decade. Yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño rewrote the rules of what could sit on the same plate. Within a few years, Nobu was no longer a restaurant. It was a vocabulary.
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The 23rd Floor
Barcelona's Nobu sits on the top floor of Nobu Hotel Barcelona, in the Eixample district. The views are the kind that stop a conversation mid-sentence. The Sagrada Familia on the skyline. The Mediterranean stretching south. The mountains behind the city catching the last of the afternoon light. Floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, so the room feels less like a restaurant and more like a terrace suspended above the rooftops.
The kitchen is led by Chef Hervé Courtot, a Frenchman who interprets Matsuhisa's recipes while weaving in local Catalan produce. When Matsuhisa visits his restaurants, he goes straight into the kitchen and works alongside the team. The food is not franchised in the way you might expect from a name this size. Each Nobu reflects its city. Barcelona's menu carries dishes you will not find at any other location: Catalan red prawns prepared new-style, langoustine with dry miso and apple, local ingredients treated with the same Japanese-Peruvian instinct that started in Lima forty years ago.
The concept of Omotenashi runs through the service. It is a Japanese philosophy of hospitality that means anticipating what someone needs before they know they need it. At Nobu, it shows up in the way the team guides first-time visitors through the menu, suggesting a rhythm: two or three cold dishes, then two or three hot ones, then sushi, then something sweet. Everything shared, family style, at a pace that allows each plate to land properly.
'When Matsuhisa visits his restaurants, he goes straight into the kitchen and works alongside the team'
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The Dishes That Started Everything
Some of these have been on the menu for thirty years. They remain because nothing has improved on them.
Black cod miso. The fish is marinated for three days in a paste of white miso, mirin, and sake. The result is sweet, rich, and layered with umami. The flesh flakes apart almost before you touch it.
Yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño. Thin slices of yellowtail, a single round of jalapeño on each piece, dressed with yuzu soy. The heat is gentle. The citrus lifts everything. It is one of those dishes that makes you wonder why nobody thought of it before.
Rock shrimp tempura. Crisp, light, served with a creamy spicy sauce that has been copied by restaurants around the world. The original still holds its own.
And then the dishes that belong to Barcelona alone. Seasonal omakase menus built around what the local markets offer that week. Baby peas with wagyu cecina. Apple yoghurt vacherin. The menu changes with the seasons, but the instinct behind it does not.
'The fish is marinated for three days in a paste of white miso, mirin, and sake'
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A Table Worth Planning For
The best meals tend to begin with a story. Matsuhisa's story starts with a boy in Saitama, moves through the sushi kitchens of Tokyo, takes an unexpected turn into the markets of Lima, survives a restaurant fire in Alaska, and eventually lands on the 23rd floor of a building in Barcelona where the sunset turns the Sagrada Familia gold.
If food is part of how you travel, and if Barcelona is on the list, this one is worth knowing about.
Come find us at No.82.