Nobu Tokyo: The Original, Twenty Years On
We booked the omakase counter. Here is what happened.
Marcus de Villiers
Culinary Correspondent
20 February 2025
10 min read
Before Nobu became an empire of 50 restaurants and a hotel brand, there was a chef named Nobuyuki Matsuhisa and a small restaurant in Minato. The Tokyo flagship still serves the purest expression of his vision. We booked the counter.
The black cod with miso is Nobu's defining dish — the one that appears on every menu from Malibu to Moscow, the one that no one who has eaten it forgets. At the Tokyo flagship, the dish tastes different than it does anywhere else. Not because the recipe changes, but because the product does: this is Hokkaido miso, Japanese black cod, and 35 years of refinement by the man who invented it.
The Omakase Counter
Eight seats, twelve courses, no menu. The chef begins with delicate slices of yellowtail with jalapeño — the other signature, the dish that changed the way the world thought about fish — and works through a progression of raw fish, grilled items, and Nobu's unique hybrid of Japanese technique and South American flavour. The meal takes two and a half hours. You will not want it to end.
“Matsuhisa's genius was understanding that Japanese precision and Peruvian boldness were not opposites. They were complements.”
Partner
Nobu Restaurants
Omakase counter from ¥45,000. Counter seats book 30 days in advance. Arrive 10 minutes early.
