De Niro continued to drop into Matsuhisa, and I continued to treat him like a regular guest, serving him Black Cod with Miso and suggesting newly invented dishes that I thought he might enjoy. When he came, he never mentioned his proposal for a joint venture in New York. In fact, he teamed up with restaurateur Drew Nieporent and turned the property he had shown me into the Tribeca Grill, a restaurant serving American fare, which opened in Four years after I had turned down his offer, De Niro called me at home.
I had assumed that the idea of starting up a restaurant together was no longer on the table. Then it suddenly hit me.
He had been waiting four whole years! My experiences in Peru and Alaska had made me extremely wary of entering into partnerships with anyone, but his willingness to wait showed me that I could trust him. In the end, four of us signed a partnership contract: restaurateur Drew Nieporent, investor Meir Teper, De Niro, and myself.
Drew Nieporent had not only opened the Tribeca Grill with De Niro but had also founded the highly successful Montrachet, a restaurant considered to be cutting-edge even for New York. His knowledge of the restaurant business and his breadth of experience was amazing, and I recognized in him a true professional even at our first meeting.
Later, it occurred to me that Drew must have known about me before we met and might even have encouraged De Niro to convince me to work with them. Perhaps he just wanted to enjoy the taste of Matsuhisa in his own neighborhood. People fly to New York from all over the world in pursuit of their goals, and the city is charged with an energy and excitement that is quite a contrast to the more laid-back Los Angeles. I was surprised to see how distinctive the cultures of these two cities were, despite being located in the same country.
When I hopped into a taxi at the airport in New York and told the driver where to go, I got no answer. In the early s, the city was notorious for its cutthroat competition. It was fun and comfortable and easy. Give me some Drew-style stories from the early days.
We were a little snakebitten at the beginning. We used to say that we could seat you in a shooting section or the no-shooting section. I was watching a program on TV about arson and realized that the building I was watching was our building, since apparently the super had tried to set fire to the building at one point. We had someone get hit by a car out front.
One of our staff members had a heart attack. We were racing, but there were some scary moments. Every nationality, quintessential New York. The Japanese restaurants in New York were all-Japanese staff, and the customers were all Japanese, pretty much, so what Nobu did alone was crucial — his friendliness and desire to serve everyone.
For me, every accomplished person seems to have gone through the portal of Nobu. Everybody knows what it is. I have other restaurants, and even 27 years after Tribeca Grill, not everyone knows what it is. You say Nobu, and everybody knows. Adele comes in for takeout. Taylor Swift has an apartment around the corner. The food is also a pretty healthy way to eat.
Seventeen years ago, Muhammad Ali comes in. Howard Bingham, his photographer, was with him and introduced him to me. He was shaking. He sits down, pulls a napkin off the table, pulls out a Sharpie, and starts scribbling like crazy. It was almost uncomfortable. I gave Howard a weird look. Then Ali flips the napkin over and keeps scribbling on the other side.
Then I got even more uncomfortable. What ensued was that he sat for 30 minutes, and on both sides, he had drawn mountain ranges, a boat, a plume of smoke, amazing.
He signed it and gave it to me as a gift. The news that big, well-funded chains like Shake Shack and Ruth's Hospitality Group had initially gotten loans set off a furor in April, prompting the administration to warn companies to make sure they qualified for the program. Specifically, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said that the program wasn't for companies that could reasonably tap other forms of capital, from equity markets to bank credit lines. The disclosures give a range for the loan sizes, making a precise tally impossible.
Thin, curved slices of wood create intimate "cave" walls behind the seating on the ground level. An undulating wooden canopy inspired by kirigami, a type of origami, unites the dining room.
Hand-cast glazed tiles in subtle shades of blue form a feature wall. This one had to be too. An intimate private dining room has shelves filled with handmade ceramic sake carafes. Maker Space Rockwell Group collaborated with several artists and craftspeople to help us conceive of some inventive details.
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