Nobu Matsuhisa: ‘I’d watch my mentor making sushi and copy him under the table’

The chef and restaurateur, 76, shares his boyhood inspiration, losing everything in a fire, and saying no to Robert De Niro

My father died in a car accident when I was seven. Whenever I missed him, I would look in the family photo album at this picture of when he had gone to Palau. He was an architect and had gone to source lumber for his work. It made me dream of going abroad someday and making him proud.

My older brother took me to sushi restaurants as a kid. They were very expensive; not the kinds of places kids would go. I was so impressed by the energy of the sushi chefs, the smells, the choice of fish. From then on, I knew that’s what I wanted to be. After graduating from high school at 18, I trained to be a sushi chef in Tokyo.