It is a measure of the success and brand recognition Nobu restaurants have achieved over the past decade that their website www.noburestaurants.com reveals nothing other than a map of the world with red dots to mark the sites of their 12 restaurant sites from Malibu to Tokyo, without bothering to even mention their presumably highly lucrative summer outpost on the island of Mykonos or their winter equivalent in the Palace Hotel, St Moritz.
And while the map reveals that there is still plenty of the universe left for the hugely talented chef Nobu Matsuhisa and his partners, including actor Robert de Niro, to conquer, starting with an outpost in the Bahamas due to open in December and another in Cape Town scheduled for 2008, it already includes their new openings in New York and London which brings the total in both cities to three (although the one in Canary Wharf bears the one-off title of Ubon). London for Nobu is now big business: it employs over 400; feeds 1,300 customers a day; and generates a projected annual turnover in excess of £20 million.
But these new restaurants prove once again that experience, however valuable, is no guarantee that the opening process will be anything less than painful. Nobu Fifty Seven, as their new mid-town New York site is called, only saw the light of day after heated discussions amongst its five, highly opinionated, partners as to whether a mid-town location would adversely affect the trading of the original Nobu and Nobu Next Door in downtown SoHo. So far, according to Managing Director Ritchie Notar, it has not, instead pulling in many of the hedge fund traders and property developers who would not normally travel the 20 minutes down town.
Arguably, Nobu Berkeley Street (as the new restaurant is misleadingly called because it has no connection to the Berkeley Hotel, Knightsbridge) presented an even bigger threat to the original Nobu Park Lane as it is no more than a mile away. And its conversion from what many may remember as the Mayfair Club (and in Queen Victoria’s day was a lodging for her ladies-in-waiting) took longer than anticipated and cost far more – its original £4.5 million budget eventually grew to £7.3 million. But while Nobu London’s Executive Chef, Barnsley-born Mark Edwards, grimaced as he revealed these figures he immediately recovered his usual happy disposition when he talked about how good business is. “It’s been like a runaway train,” he told me. “We’ve been serving over 500 customers a night since we opened.”
Edwards’ demeanour clouded over again when I quizzed him on the policy in their new restaurant of not taking bookings for tables of less than six. “It seems that we simply can’t do the right thing. We have done this specifically because too many of our customers at the original restaurant kept on saying that they just couldn’t get a booking, so we thought this would be a solution. And I am delighted to say that for most people it works. Customers seem willing to come and drink in the bar and wait for their table. And so far the new site has not affected business at the original one where, although the numbers are down slightly, the average spend is now higher.”
But in a move that clearly reveals the accumulated experience of those running Nobu London the new restaurant is not open for lunch at all and instead runs continually from 1800 to 0200. “I have actually had some ribbing from other chefs who say we’re only working part time,” Edwards admitted, “but in fact these eight hours are a longer period than a normal restaurant’s two hour opening at lunch and four hours in the evening. And with a 2am licence we can take more money between 11pm and when we close than over even a busy lunchtime.”
“There were three other important considerations,” Edwards continued. “Firstly, there is definitely an over-supply of restaurants in central London at lunchtime. Secondly, by being open at 1800 we are there for people who want to come straight from work, and finally we are available for private hire during the day and so far companies like Universal Pictures, Cartier and Vogue have all taken advantage of this.” The thought of such lucrative business brings another smile to Edwards’ face.
One other fundamental difference between this new Nobu and its elder sibling is that, once you are escorted out of the noisy bar, up the dramatic staircase and finally get the menu, there is a central section devoted to dishes cooked in their new wood burning oven. These, and the one that has also been installed in Nobu Fifty Seven, owe their presence to the fact that Nobu himself has one on the patio of his house in Beverley Hills and has been excited by what he can cook in it. And while Edwards confessed that it is not a particularly Japanese technique, he admitted that his biggest single mistake to date was not putting in a second oven, so successful have the results been. The ovens are gas but supplemented by kiln-dried logs to the side, a combination which cooks his dishes to a very high temperature very quickly and simultaneously seals in all their juices.
My first dinner included slivers of tender octopus with yuzu lemon garlic; roast black cod belly with ponzu, soy, lemon and vinegar; and a remarkably successful combination of thin slices of humble cabbage topped with very finely diced white truffle. But better still, on my return visit were three thin slices of what was described as ‘toro steak collar’, cut from near the head of tuna. These resemble the fatty, most prized and usually even more expensive underbelly of the fish, and had been roasted in the oven so that they had taken on the brown colour normally associated with over cooked beef but in fact were so packed with the intense flavour of the sea that I was nibbling on the bones long after the flesh had disappeared.
Any recommendation for Nobu Berkeley – and we certainly had great fun and good food on both occasions – must come with some form of health warning as the noise level from the moment you walk in and hit the invisible but seemingly solid wall of sound made up of the music, conversation and the activity that emanates from the staff is unrelenting. And, of course, it is incredibly cool, so that anyone like me, the other side of 50 and unwillingly losing their hair, feels as out of place as the fish on the sushi counter. But for that dish of oven-roasted toro steak collar I would happily return any night of the week.
Nobu Fifty Seven 40 West 57th Street, New York, 212-757 3000. Open Monday- Saturday dinner and for lunch from mid-December. Closed Sunday.
Nobu Berkeley 15 Berkeley Street, London W1, 020- 7290 9222. Open Monday-Saturday 1800-0200.