Chef to the stars

LAUREN TAYLOR meets renowned chef Nobuyuki 'Nobu' Matsuhisa to talk A-list guests and why he has no plans to retire

- LAUREN TAYLOR

The art of sushi making was reserved for restaurants in Japan at the time. “Becoming a sushi chef was my dream when I was a kid,” Nobu says. He dropped out of architect high school to train at a small family-run sushi restaurant in Tokyo at 18, but spent a “tough” three years cleaning and prepping before any of the senior chefs would show him how to make sushi.

FROM Taylor Swift to Leonardo DiCaprio, many A-listers have been spotted dining at the swanky Nobu restaurants, a global empire run by Japanese chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa.

But no one will quite live up to Princess Diana dining at his first London eatery, in 1997, shortly before her death.

“My business partner invited Princess Diana, then I cooked for her,” says the chef, better known as Nobu.

Admitting he was nervous to say hello, the 76-year-old notes: “I said, ‘Pleasure to meet you Princess. And she said to me, ‘Oh, Chef Nobu, I've read about you!’

“I was so surprised, I was so happy she knew me,” he says proudly, now. “She loved what I cooked for her’, which was “a very simple tempura, I didn’t want to give anything too strange to the royal family. She liked the tempura, she liked fish, sushi... I think she enjoyed it - she ate it all.”