Nobu Matsuhisa

Nobuyuki Matsuhisa—known to the world simply as “Nobu”—is the acclaimed and highly influential chef proprietor of Nobu and Matsuhisa restaurants located across five continents. He worked at the restaurant Matsue Sushi in Shinjuku, Tokyo, for seven years and was invited by a regular customer, who was a Peruvian entrepreneur of Japanese descent, to open a Japanese restaurant in Peru. At the age of twenty-four, he moved to Lima and opened a restaurant with the same name of Matsuei in partnership with his sponsor. In 1977, he moved to Los Angeles and opened his own restaurant in Beverly Hills ten years later. The restaurant quickly became a hot spot and was frequented by Hollywood celebrities, including Robert De Niro, who invited Nobu to set up a restaurant in Tribeca. In August 1994, the two opened up Nobu to critical acclaim. He now has forty-one restaurants and seven hotels around the world.