October 12, 2021 • 24 mins
In this week’s episode, “Bobby and Sophie” order in from their favorite Sushi Restaurant, Nobu. As the co-hosts enjoy their sushi feast, they and discuss their favorite sushi spots, the difference between traditional and Americanized sushi, and how hard it is to actually make great sushi.
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Bobby Flay’s Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/bobbyflay
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio.
My name is Bobby Flay and I'm here with my
daughter and co host. I'm Flag and I'm Always Hungry.
Sophie and I gathered around my stove to cook together. Well,
you cook, I asked the questions, and eat the food.
If does any food left, you come to the table
together to share a meal, connect as a family, and
tell the stories that matter to us. All right, Sophie,
(00:26):
I think this is one of your favorite cuisines. Talking
about sushi. Oh, we are talking about sushi. I love
some good sushi, and there's great sushi in l A.
Is it rice or no rice? Nice? Okay, Sophie, I
have a surprise for you, baby. We're gonna talk about sushi.
(00:48):
Looks like a sushi like the culture of sushi in
this country, you know. And oh my god, I ordered
it from Nobu, which is like amazing. This looks good.
I got some of your favorite things. Yeah you get well.
This right here is yellowtail with halapanio and it comes
(01:08):
with like a pondzu sauce. So good. I got tuned
with Crispy rice. So this is the yellow tail, which
is my one of my favorite fish with the slice
of halapanio on top of a little ponds of sauce
on top of that. It's one of the noblest famous apps.
If I just POI this on top, okay, and then
(01:29):
a little silanto. This is the crispy rice situation, which
I know, I know you love. Can you give me
a little spoon there? Okay? And then we have sushi.
We have sea scallop, sushi, tuna, sushi. Then I got
some handles blue crab, it's stream tempura hand roll. And
(01:52):
then I got cut rolls, yellow tail scallion, spicy tuna,
spicy scalop. That's my favorite. Down with that. Yes, that
sounds so good. I am kind of a scalop fan
me too, you are, Yeah, not everybody likes it. I
love a spicy scallop situation. So let's sit down and
talk some sushi. Okay, thank you, Nobu and Dad. I'm
(02:19):
feeling pretty lucky right now. Tell me about your luck.
I'm so happy to have Nobu sitting in front of us.
No the chef, No, Nobu sushi so good. So today
we're talking about sushi culture, which is what I like
to call it. Sushi is such an incredibly popular cuisine
(02:39):
in this country. Wasn't too long ago that wasn't the case.
I mean, wait, wait, wait, before you were born. But
sushi has just become it's been. It's become part of
how Americans love to eat. It's like I always say, like,
when you think about what you want to eat, he's
sitting around with you, like your husband or wife, or
your girlfriend or your friends or whatever. You're like, we're hungry,
(03:00):
Like what are the things that you like? What are
the top five things that you crave? So Italian food,
maybe a steakhouse if you're in that kind of mood,
you know, Japanese food or sushi comes in right at
the top. It's also I find it to be I'm
not really sure I'm going to use this as my experience,
(03:23):
but I find it to be a good date place. Yeah, definitely,
especially like a first date. You know, everybody seems to
like sushi. Now, not everybody likes every single thing on
at the sushi bar, Like some people don't like sea hurts,
and some people don't like giant clam so people don't
like salmon, who knows. But for the most part, people
love sushi, which is really interesting because you know, a
(03:44):
lot of it is raw. Some of it's cooked, of course,
but you know a lot of it is raw. And
this is a cuisine that looks easy when you look
at it. But the bottom line is I won't ass
with it because and I know how to cook, but
this is you know, cooking rice for sushi, slicing fish
(04:09):
for sushi, rolling rolls, hand rolls, cut roles. It's an
art form. This is something that is I don't think
people even understand how difficult it is to do it right.
Maria Motto, who has long been a colleague of mine,
you know, at the Food Network and as a chef
in New York City, Um, we had a famous who
(04:30):
had a very famous battle many many moons ago that
people still talk about. It's kind of funny at this point,
but you know, we've we've been friends forever. And he
told me it took him five years to learn how
to cook rice. That's a lot of time to cook rice.
I mean, so when you think about that, when you
think about how you know they treat the rice is
(04:52):
such an incredibly important part of this cuisine, and he's
this is a master, talk about it took him five
years to cook rice to learn how to cook rice correctly.
You don't want to mess with this like on a whim.
And that's I mean, a lot of people do it,
and a lot of chefs who are not trained in
(05:13):
the cuisine of real sushi, you know, attempted all the time.
Sometimes they get they get by and they're able to
do it, and you know, they are able to evoke
the flavors in this net. But like then you go
to a place like you know, Nobu or Nakazawa or
Sushi Park in Los Angeles and you're like, oh, okay,
(05:35):
this is this is what's really happening, and I don't
mess with it. Like have you ever made sushi? Yeah,
like a few times it doesn't look right. I'm just
telling you right now you're still trying to figure out
how to make the rice. But anyway, so let's talk
about what we're eating here, because you know, frankly, I
(05:57):
you know, I love sushi. I think no who has
you know, no bos become synonymous with sushi, you know,
with high end contemporary sushi. You know. Interestingly, Nobu spent
a lot of his life in Peru. Did you know
that that's why his food tastes like this. There's a
huge Japanese community in Peru, and that's why, like the
(06:20):
he uses like those Peruvian chili peppers and whatnot to
to flavor the food. So interesting. That's why his his
Japanese food is different than I'm just watching my cat Nacho.
He's like, wait a second, he's sushi. This is like
my country. He's Nacho is like he's a big Nobuo
fan as well. Um, Nacho, can you He's like okay,
(06:43):
He's like, listen, you bring baratuna. So so anyway, so
that's one of the things that separates that's really interesting. Yeah,
that's one of the things that separates Nobu from some
other you know, great sushi chefs. He brings this this
these um, these fruity spicy chilis to the game, and
you know it obviously it works. I've known Nobu for
(07:03):
a long time. He's a he's a great guy. You know.
It's like at this point, like the place almost was
like people like, I mean, they're actually is a noble
I'm like, yeah, he's a real person. He was in
that movie Casino. He played a Japanese gambler, like a
big Japanese businessman. Gambler. Uh and the reason why he
was in that because de Niro, you know, was it
(07:26):
was was the star of that movie. And Robert de
Niro and Nobu are partners that they started Nobu together.
Did you know that? So it was I didn't know that. No,
that's so funny. Yeah. The first the first Nobu was
in New York City in Tribeca. I remember when it opened,
and you know, it was like wildly successful to the
day I closed, and uh yeah. It was De Niro,
(07:48):
Nobu and a guy named Junior Peran, who is an
old friend of mine. One of the great restaurant tours
in New York's history, and they opened Nobo together and
then there's been no there's Noble was all over the
world and it's just amazing how they keep up the
quality of this food in all the places that you
that you eat it, you know, it's it's really good.
(08:08):
I eat sushi at least once a week. Do you
at least what do you once a week? I'm gonna
say it's somewhere between. If that's about one to me
ten days? Okay, what do I ordered? I love a
spicy scallop roll. Well, you're unluck I know you ordered
(08:30):
a good one. Um. I really like them, from Kazunori
to really good. Um. And then I want to talk
to you about ka but go ahead. God spicy tune
of the crispy rice as an appetizer. Um. I really
do like a shrim temporal role. I don't know, is
that like, is that lame? No, it's not lame at all. Okay,
(08:52):
I love a blue blue crab role. And then I
do like a like yellowtail sashimi or toro sashim so
towards the tuna belly. It's like the it's a delicacy.
It's very it's incredibly expensive. I mean, I like, you know,
the difference between sushi and sashimi is sushi has rice.
Sashimi is no rice. It's just raw sliced fish. And
(09:15):
you know, I like both. I mean, sometimes I'm not
in the mood for rice, but although I really feel
like the rice is such an important part of what
this culture is. But you know, not everything has to
have rice on it. And sometimes I just I'll just
order like and I like kind of weird things too.
When I say weird, it might be weird to the
American palette. It's that weird to the Japanese pallet. But
like I like giant clam, I like the chewinest of it.
(09:37):
I like sea urchin. Yeah, I love octopus. I love
the rush shrimp. How do you feel about like invitation
crab and sushi. I don't feel good about it. I
don't know. I mean, and in a high end sushi restaurant,
that's not happening. You know, it's pollock. It's not even shellfish.
It's a fin fish that's colored with that pink color
(09:59):
to make it look like crab, and it has it
has a similar texture. So why do they do that?
Is it because crab is expensive? Crab is crazy expensive?
But in a good sushi restaurant, you're not finding that.
(10:29):
And you know, then there's the question of like there's
some quick service sushi restaurants now like sugar fish, so um,
sugar fish is good, delicious. I mean Kasuni is more
so they're they're fast, they're fast service. No no, wait
wait wait, well, first of all they're different because Kazun
(10:50):
Noorri it's the same company, right, Okay, So sugar let's
just let's just go back. Sugar Fish is built around
a sushi chef, named Nizawa. Okay, this guy, this guy,
I went to his place in Studio City many years
ago with Katie Brown. We were sitting having lunch, and
he was famous for throwing people out of the restaurant. Yes,
(11:13):
why because if people didn't act the way he wanted
them to act, he asked him to leave abruptly. He
wasn't kind about it, like he just did it. He
just threw him out. He was like his way or
the highway. And he was really thought of as like
the sushi king of l A for a while. And
you know, very sort of modest sushi bar in Studio
(11:35):
City wasn't like glitz and glamor like something like Nobu
or Morimoto. It wasn't like that. Um but and and
also like you would you don't order, He just feed
you until he thinks that you're done. Okay, okay, that's
the way it was. And there was so I was
sitting at the sushi bar with Katie Brown, and it
was a couple sitting at a table behind us, and
(11:57):
for some reason, so the so the woman at the
table ordered sushi and the guy literally took a sandwich
out that he brought from someplace else that opened it
up at the table, he literally jumped over the sushi
bar over my head. The guy at the restaurant. I mean,
I was like, I felt like I was witnessing history. Wait,
(12:18):
that's like out of a movie. It was, and I'm
not I'm not kidding, could happened anyway, But also, what
was that guy doing whipping out a sandwich out of restaurant.
It's not cool, but listen, that's another story. And anyway,
so so that restaurant closed, and then he became partners
with some investment group and they created something called sugar
Fish by Nizawa if you I think his name is
(12:38):
on the Yeah, and it's basically built on his cuisine
but in a more affordable and quicker environment. And sugar
Fish he has done really well. People love it, you know,
and you basically, yeah, I love sugar fish. Yeah. And
in that concept, there's like packages that you order right like, um,
(13:01):
they're they're kind of they're cute names. Yeah. It's like
it's like one of them is called trust me and
like trust me light and yeah, which is basically what
Nizawa used to do, except he didn't really ask you,
you know, he just he just you know, he just
and also like if you if you were still hungry
and like he thought you were done, you were done. Okay, Yeah,
(13:23):
there's the to go. If you're ordering on Postmates, it's
the to go trust me, the the to go light.
So trust me just basically means I'm going to tell
you whatever I want. Don't think, just eat. Exactly what
they're saying is like, let us just do this and
you know, we'll take care of you, which is nice. Um,
(13:45):
you know, which breeds brings me to the topic of ohmakasse,
which it is basically a tasting menu of of whatever
the chef wants to do. I've never done that. You've
never done that? No? Really? Okay, well it can get
very expensive because you're just saying do whatever you want
(14:05):
and then the bill comes and then like you're like, okay,
so you never had a macas before? Really? I mean
you've never Okay, do do do when you go on dates?
Do people take you to to sushi? Is that's something
you guys do? Um? Yeahs i'n't been on one of
those in a while. I don't know. I go to
(14:29):
sushi with my girlfriends. Is that a pregame situation? No?
It's not. That's where you're going for the night. Me
and me and my best friend Whitney go to this
sushi place in Taca in Brentwood called to Cow and
we go every Sunday. What how come I have never
gone on this place because you haven't been invited. Perfect,
(14:50):
you can come to the Cow on Sunday though. That's
a spot. It's so good. Yeah, I went to um.
I went to this I guess it's like a sushi
convention almost, and I covered it for for work, and
I met these guys who have invented this like automatic
sushi making machine. Yes, there's a lot of that. Yeah,
(15:12):
it's really interesting. I don't I don't know, honestly, Like
when I hear that it takes Morimoto, who is one
of the best sushi masters in the world, five years
to learn how to make rice. I'm not sure I'm
going to believe the machine can do the same thing.
Maybe you can. I have no idea. But that's the thing.
I don't think it's making the rice, it's forming it. Well.
(15:37):
Have you watched Gero Dreams of Dreams of shu is
Jero or Hero It's j I r O Gero Dreams
of sushi I have not. Okay, you need to watch
this movie. It's about a sushi restaurant in the subway
in Tokyo that has three Michelin stars. Yes, I know,
I know about this place. And actually one of the
(15:59):
apprentices moved to New York and is the chef slash
partner of Nakazawa in the village. Really cool, just a
four star restaurant. Have you been to that restaurant, the
one in the in Japan? Have not? No, you know,
I've only been to Tokyo once. I competed in an
iron chef there against Moremoto. In the rematch. He beat
(16:20):
me the first time in New York, and then I
beat him in Tokyo a few months later. And uh,
the people there from Fuji Television that we're producing the
show were incredibly nice to me, and they took me
to like these little hole in the wall sushi spots karaoke. Yeah,
I mean, I had a serious, you know, Tokyo experience.
(16:40):
It was so fun and uh, it was really amazing.
What about those um you go to the like I
went to when I was in Tokyo. I went to
a few of them, those sushi places where they just
make a bunch of roles and put them on that
like conveyor belt. Yeah have you ever done that? I
have not done that. It's kind of fun in l A.
No I did it in Tokyo. Could it could be
(17:03):
there there? I mean they definitely have them all over.
You were in Tokyo for what? Oh, you went on
a trip with with one of your ex friends. That's
what we'll call them. Um. Yeah, yeah, we hiked Mount
Fuji and we went to Tokyo. I mean, in place
is just so cool. Oh my god, it's so fun.
(17:25):
Tokyo is such a great such a great city. It's
so clean, and you can get anything in a vending machine.
And you know what else I love is that you
can go to like a little like convenience stores and
get really good um sushi and good what are those
what are those little sandwiches called? They're almost like triangles.
I don't know. After hand roll, I'm done, I don't
(17:47):
I don't know. I wish I wish I knew more
about it. I wish I really knew the intricacies of
it better, and I wish I could make it better.
You know what became kind of a thing when I
when I was at school there there's um the sushi
burrito trucks. I cannot get behind it. It does not
taste good to me. I'm not into that fusion. I mean,
(18:10):
you know, Mexican or cal Max and sushi should stay
in their own lanes. Do you think? The Other thing
I like what that Nobu does is he does like
some really cool appetizer dishes, you know, like very thinly
(18:32):
sliced yellow tail with hallopaniods of sauce. They do something
kill a new style, which is like when they take
slices of it could be like it could be yellow tail,
could be They do a lot with salmon or fluke
or something like that, and they take this warm vinigrette
that has like sesame oil soy sauce. I don't even
know what else. I mean, I'm not I just don't know,
but it's like definitely SESAMEI oil and then like some
(18:55):
chives or scallions and they heat it up and then
they just pour the hot finigrette over the fit so
it just kind of slightly cooks it. That's one of
my favorite techniques that they do because I just kind
of love that active action where the dressing is warm
and it's just slightly cooking the fish. I think. I
(19:15):
think it's a cool technique I've done. I've actually been
inspired by that when some things that I've done before,
like I did some of that stuff like at Shark,
Oh yeah, you made sushi at Shark, Well not yet.
I heard a great sushi chef, Kio. His name is Kio.
He you know, he's just, you know, again just one
of these people that are just masters at their craft.
(19:36):
And when you look at sushi chefs and they break
out their arsenal of knives, I look at my knife
set and I feel like it's an erector kit compared
to what these sushi chefs have. You know, their steel
is just so like it just seems so sharp and
so broken in and like there's like every knife has
(19:59):
its own story, you know, and uh, you know, they
have some weird shapes to them because they've been sharpened
so many times. And it's literally like when you talk
about tools of the trade, I mean, these sushi chefs
are like that's that's that's their foundation, what they're cutting
the fish with. It's really great. And so one of
(20:20):
the things we did was like Kio would make sushi rice,
and he would make some extra for me to make
like crispy rice dishes with. So we'd make like crispy
rice dishes with mushrooms or with black beans or sweet
potatoes and things like that to go as side dishes,
you know, with green onions and stuff like that with
the fish and so, and the sushi rice had like
(20:41):
this little sort of a little sweetness to it. It
had just it was like it had just the right
kind of bite to it and it would crisp up
really beautifully in a pan. So having like a sushi
chef on board in the restaurant was really valuable. Yeah, definitely.
Um I never went into the sushi shation itself. I
was basically it was not allowed in there. Not that
(21:02):
he was not that he was like that. I just
was like, this is your domain, sir. You don't want
me to hear this. This is obviously not classic and
this is definitely an American thing. But like you know,
every once in a while you go to a sushi
restaurant that isn't necessarily as high end as Nobu and
they're using like cream cheese into it. Yeah, that's they
(21:25):
call those Philly Philly rolls rolls. Ye. I mean, I mean, listen,
I'm not what I'm not. I mean, I'm only a
purist by by eating. But I don't know how to
make this stuff, so, you know. But that said, when
I want sushi, it's a piece of it's a slice
of pristine fish on a beautifully handcrafted rice. And like
(21:50):
a lot of places you go to, the guy says
to you, this is X Y and Z, no soy sauce.
Don't put soy sauce on it, right, Okay, But our
culture basically has us. You know, you see a lot
of people they take the sy sauce and they make
their own pond of soy sauce with like they put
(22:11):
a sabby in it, and and it's just like like
it's not that's really not what it's supposed to be happening,
you know, from a you know, from a purest standpoint.
A lot of times they don't want you to put
anything on it, or they'll just rub like a little
of their own sauce on into something and just put
like a like a brush of it on and then
(22:31):
they're like just eat it the way it is. You know,
it's really cool. I remember vaguely. You bring me to Nobu.
We were with a group of people when I was
really young, and you really wanted me to try like
all of the remember this, you were very young and
I was not having it. You're not having it. Look
(22:52):
at you now. I can't get enough once a week, yeah,
I know. But the other thing is that Japanese. Japanese
cuisine has a lot of cooked food as well. And
one of the things that Nobu does that I think
is so cool is he does like the crispy rock
shrimp appetizer with the spicy mayonnaise, and he does one
of the coolest dishes is the squid pasta. Have you
(23:13):
had that I don't think I have. It's not pasta
squid that looks like pasta. Oh no, it's fantastic. Yeah.
And then it's in like some soy situation. It's so good.
It's really really good. And they so they score it,
they score the squid so it looks like it's like
Rigby Tony or something, but it's it's it's squid. That's
(23:35):
so cool. You also like to go to Blue Ribbon Sushi, right,
Blue Ribbon Sushi is very good. But you know, I
know those guys that are Blue Ribbon, right, so it's
you know, it's Eric and Bruce there too, you know,
Jewish New Yorkers who started Blue Ribbon. You know, in
Blue Ribbon was like the original chef hangout from years ago.
And basically they're serving like amazing fried chicken and you know,
(23:58):
great meat dishes and things like that. Very American slash,
you know, I guess a French beat to it. Those
guys know exactly what they know and what they don't, Okay,
they're really really smart about it. And they opened a
Blue Ribbon Sushi and they hired amazing sushi chefs and
they just did they let those guys do what they do.
(24:21):
And that's what you need to do, is let the
people that know what they're doing do what they're doing.
Don't get in their way, don't get in Kio's way,
get his way. Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay
and Sophie Flay. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Always
(24:42):
Hungry is produced, edited and mixed by Jonathan hoss Dress
There Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more
podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio.
My name is Bobby Flay and I'm here with my
daughter and co host. I'm Flag and I'm Always Hungry.
Sophie and I gathered around my stove to cook together. Well,
you cook, I asked the questions, and eat the food.
If does any food left, you come to the table
together to share a meal, connect as a family, and
tell the stories that matter to us. All right, Sophie,
(00:26):
I think this is one of your favorite cuisines. Talking
about sushi. Oh, we are talking about sushi. I love
some good sushi, and there's great sushi in l A.
Is it rice or no rice? Nice? Okay, Sophie, I
have a surprise for you, baby. We're gonna talk about sushi.
(00:48):
Looks like a sushi like the culture of sushi in
this country, you know. And oh my god, I ordered
it from Nobu, which is like amazing. This looks good.
I got some of your favorite things. Yeah you get well.
This right here is yellowtail with halapanio and it comes
(01:08):
with like a pondzu sauce. So good. I got tuned
with Crispy rice. So this is the yellow tail, which
is my one of my favorite fish with the slice
of halapanio on top of a little ponds of sauce
on top of that. It's one of the noblest famous apps.
If I just POI this on top, okay, and then
(01:29):
a little silanto. This is the crispy rice situation, which
I know, I know you love. Can you give me
a little spoon there? Okay? And then we have sushi.
We have sea scallop, sushi, tuna, sushi. Then I got
some handles blue crab, it's stream tempura hand roll. And
(01:52):
then I got cut rolls, yellow tail scallion, spicy tuna,
spicy scalop. That's my favorite. Down with that. Yes, that
sounds so good. I am kind of a scalop fan
me too, you are, Yeah, not everybody likes it. I
love a spicy scallop situation. So let's sit down and
talk some sushi. Okay, thank you, Nobu and Dad. I'm
(02:19):
feeling pretty lucky right now. Tell me about your luck.
I'm so happy to have Nobu sitting in front of us.
No the chef, No, Nobu sushi so good. So today
we're talking about sushi culture, which is what I like
to call it. Sushi is such an incredibly popular cuisine
(02:39):
in this country. Wasn't too long ago that wasn't the case.
I mean, wait, wait, wait, before you were born. But
sushi has just become it's been. It's become part of
how Americans love to eat. It's like I always say, like,
when you think about what you want to eat, he's
sitting around with you, like your husband or wife, or
your girlfriend or your friends or whatever. You're like, we're hungry,
(03:00):
Like what are the things that you like? What are
the top five things that you crave? So Italian food,
maybe a steakhouse if you're in that kind of mood,
you know, Japanese food or sushi comes in right at
the top. It's also I find it to be I'm
not really sure I'm going to use this as my experience,
(03:23):
but I find it to be a good date place. Yeah, definitely,
especially like a first date. You know, everybody seems to
like sushi. Now, not everybody likes every single thing on
at the sushi bar, Like some people don't like sea hurts,
and some people don't like giant clam so people don't
like salmon, who knows. But for the most part, people
love sushi, which is really interesting because you know, a
(03:44):
lot of it is raw. Some of it's cooked, of course,
but you know a lot of it is raw. And
this is a cuisine that looks easy when you look
at it. But the bottom line is I won't ass
with it because and I know how to cook, but
this is you know, cooking rice for sushi, slicing fish
(04:09):
for sushi, rolling rolls, hand rolls, cut roles. It's an
art form. This is something that is I don't think
people even understand how difficult it is to do it right.
Maria Motto, who has long been a colleague of mine,
you know, at the Food Network and as a chef
in New York City, Um, we had a famous who
(04:30):
had a very famous battle many many moons ago that
people still talk about. It's kind of funny at this point,
but you know, we've we've been friends forever. And he
told me it took him five years to learn how
to cook rice. That's a lot of time to cook rice.
I mean, so when you think about that, when you
think about how you know they treat the rice is
(04:52):
such an incredibly important part of this cuisine, and he's
this is a master, talk about it took him five
years to cook rice to learn how to cook rice correctly.
You don't want to mess with this like on a whim.
And that's I mean, a lot of people do it,
and a lot of chefs who are not trained in
(05:13):
the cuisine of real sushi, you know, attempted all the time.
Sometimes they get they get by and they're able to
do it, and you know, they are able to evoke
the flavors in this net. But like then you go
to a place like you know, Nobu or Nakazawa or
Sushi Park in Los Angeles and you're like, oh, okay,
(05:35):
this is this is what's really happening, and I don't
mess with it. Like have you ever made sushi? Yeah,
like a few times it doesn't look right. I'm just
telling you right now you're still trying to figure out
how to make the rice. But anyway, so let's talk
about what we're eating here, because you know, frankly, I
(05:57):
you know, I love sushi. I think no who has
you know, no bos become synonymous with sushi, you know,
with high end contemporary sushi. You know. Interestingly, Nobu spent
a lot of his life in Peru. Did you know
that that's why his food tastes like this. There's a
huge Japanese community in Peru, and that's why, like the
(06:20):
he uses like those Peruvian chili peppers and whatnot to
to flavor the food. So interesting. That's why his his
Japanese food is different than I'm just watching my cat Nacho.
He's like, wait a second, he's sushi. This is like
my country. He's Nacho is like he's a big Nobuo
fan as well. Um, Nacho, can you He's like okay,
(06:43):
He's like, listen, you bring baratuna. So so anyway, so
that's one of the things that separates that's really interesting. Yeah,
that's one of the things that separates Nobu from some
other you know, great sushi chefs. He brings this this
these um, these fruity spicy chilis to the game, and
you know it obviously it works. I've known Nobu for
(07:03):
a long time. He's a he's a great guy. You know.
It's like at this point, like the place almost was
like people like, I mean, they're actually is a noble
I'm like, yeah, he's a real person. He was in
that movie Casino. He played a Japanese gambler, like a
big Japanese businessman. Gambler. Uh and the reason why he
was in that because de Niro, you know, was it
(07:26):
was was the star of that movie. And Robert de
Niro and Nobu are partners that they started Nobu together.
Did you know that? So it was I didn't know that. No,
that's so funny. Yeah. The first the first Nobu was
in New York City in Tribeca. I remember when it opened,
and you know, it was like wildly successful to the
day I closed, and uh yeah. It was De Niro,
(07:48):
Nobu and a guy named Junior Peran, who is an
old friend of mine. One of the great restaurant tours
in New York's history, and they opened Nobo together and
then there's been no there's Noble was all over the
world and it's just amazing how they keep up the
quality of this food in all the places that you
that you eat it, you know, it's it's really good.
(08:08):
I eat sushi at least once a week. Do you
at least what do you once a week? I'm gonna
say it's somewhere between. If that's about one to me
ten days? Okay, what do I ordered? I love a
spicy scallop roll. Well, you're unluck I know you ordered
(08:30):
a good one. Um. I really like them, from Kazunori
to really good. Um. And then I want to talk
to you about ka but go ahead. God spicy tune
of the crispy rice as an appetizer. Um. I really
do like a shrim temporal role. I don't know, is
that like, is that lame? No, it's not lame at all. Okay,
(08:52):
I love a blue blue crab role. And then I
do like a like yellowtail sashimi or toro sashim so
towards the tuna belly. It's like the it's a delicacy.
It's very it's incredibly expensive. I mean, I like, you know,
the difference between sushi and sashimi is sushi has rice.
Sashimi is no rice. It's just raw sliced fish. And
(09:15):
you know, I like both. I mean, sometimes I'm not
in the mood for rice, but although I really feel
like the rice is such an important part of what
this culture is. But you know, not everything has to
have rice on it. And sometimes I just I'll just
order like and I like kind of weird things too.
When I say weird, it might be weird to the
American palette. It's that weird to the Japanese pallet. But
like I like giant clam, I like the chewinest of it.
(09:37):
I like sea urchin. Yeah, I love octopus. I love
the rush shrimp. How do you feel about like invitation
crab and sushi. I don't feel good about it. I
don't know. I mean, and in a high end sushi restaurant,
that's not happening. You know, it's pollock. It's not even shellfish.
It's a fin fish that's colored with that pink color
(09:59):
to make it look like crab, and it has it
has a similar texture. So why do they do that?
Is it because crab is expensive? Crab is crazy expensive?
But in a good sushi restaurant, you're not finding that.
(10:29):
And you know, then there's the question of like there's
some quick service sushi restaurants now like sugar fish, so um,
sugar fish is good, delicious. I mean Kasuni is more
so they're they're fast, they're fast service. No no, wait
wait wait, well, first of all they're different because Kazun
(10:50):
Noorri it's the same company, right, Okay, So sugar let's
just let's just go back. Sugar Fish is built around
a sushi chef, named Nizawa. Okay, this guy, this guy,
I went to his place in Studio City many years
ago with Katie Brown. We were sitting having lunch, and
he was famous for throwing people out of the restaurant. Yes,
(11:13):
why because if people didn't act the way he wanted
them to act, he asked him to leave abruptly. He
wasn't kind about it, like he just did it. He
just threw him out. He was like his way or
the highway. And he was really thought of as like
the sushi king of l A for a while. And
you know, very sort of modest sushi bar in Studio
(11:35):
City wasn't like glitz and glamor like something like Nobu
or Morimoto. It wasn't like that. Um but and and
also like you would you don't order, He just feed
you until he thinks that you're done. Okay, okay, that's
the way it was. And there was so I was
sitting at the sushi bar with Katie Brown, and it
was a couple sitting at a table behind us, and
(11:57):
for some reason, so the so the woman at the
table ordered sushi and the guy literally took a sandwich
out that he brought from someplace else that opened it
up at the table, he literally jumped over the sushi
bar over my head. The guy at the restaurant. I mean,
I was like, I felt like I was witnessing history. Wait,
(12:18):
that's like out of a movie. It was, and I'm
not I'm not kidding, could happened anyway, But also, what
was that guy doing whipping out a sandwich out of restaurant.
It's not cool, but listen, that's another story. And anyway,
so so that restaurant closed, and then he became partners
with some investment group and they created something called sugar
Fish by Nizawa if you I think his name is
(12:38):
on the Yeah, and it's basically built on his cuisine
but in a more affordable and quicker environment. And sugar
Fish he has done really well. People love it, you know,
and you basically, yeah, I love sugar fish. Yeah. And
in that concept, there's like packages that you order right like, um,
(13:01):
they're they're kind of they're cute names. Yeah. It's like
it's like one of them is called trust me and
like trust me light and yeah, which is basically what
Nizawa used to do, except he didn't really ask you,
you know, he just he just you know, he just
and also like if you if you were still hungry
and like he thought you were done, you were done. Okay, Yeah,
(13:23):
there's the to go. If you're ordering on Postmates, it's
the to go trust me, the the to go light.
So trust me just basically means I'm going to tell
you whatever I want. Don't think, just eat. Exactly what
they're saying is like, let us just do this and
you know, we'll take care of you, which is nice. Um,
(13:45):
you know, which breeds brings me to the topic of ohmakasse,
which it is basically a tasting menu of of whatever
the chef wants to do. I've never done that. You've
never done that? No? Really? Okay, well it can get
very expensive because you're just saying do whatever you want
(14:05):
and then the bill comes and then like you're like, okay,
so you never had a macas before? Really? I mean
you've never Okay, do do do when you go on dates?
Do people take you to to sushi? Is that's something
you guys do? Um? Yeahs i'n't been on one of
those in a while. I don't know. I go to
(14:29):
sushi with my girlfriends. Is that a pregame situation? No?
It's not. That's where you're going for the night. Me
and me and my best friend Whitney go to this
sushi place in Taca in Brentwood called to Cow and
we go every Sunday. What how come I have never
gone on this place because you haven't been invited. Perfect,
(14:50):
you can come to the Cow on Sunday though. That's
a spot. It's so good. Yeah, I went to um.
I went to this I guess it's like a sushi
convention almost, and I covered it for for work, and
I met these guys who have invented this like automatic
sushi making machine. Yes, there's a lot of that. Yeah,
(15:12):
it's really interesting. I don't I don't know, honestly, Like
when I hear that it takes Morimoto, who is one
of the best sushi masters in the world, five years
to learn how to make rice. I'm not sure I'm
going to believe the machine can do the same thing.
Maybe you can. I have no idea. But that's the thing.
I don't think it's making the rice, it's forming it. Well.
(15:37):
Have you watched Gero Dreams of Dreams of shu is
Jero or Hero It's j I r O Gero Dreams
of sushi I have not. Okay, you need to watch
this movie. It's about a sushi restaurant in the subway
in Tokyo that has three Michelin stars. Yes, I know,
I know about this place. And actually one of the
(15:59):
apprentices moved to New York and is the chef slash
partner of Nakazawa in the village. Really cool, just a
four star restaurant. Have you been to that restaurant, the
one in the in Japan? Have not? No, you know,
I've only been to Tokyo once. I competed in an
iron chef there against Moremoto. In the rematch. He beat
(16:20):
me the first time in New York, and then I
beat him in Tokyo a few months later. And uh,
the people there from Fuji Television that we're producing the
show were incredibly nice to me, and they took me
to like these little hole in the wall sushi spots karaoke. Yeah,
I mean, I had a serious, you know, Tokyo experience.
(16:40):
It was so fun and uh, it was really amazing.
What about those um you go to the like I
went to when I was in Tokyo. I went to
a few of them, those sushi places where they just
make a bunch of roles and put them on that
like conveyor belt. Yeah have you ever done that? I
have not done that. It's kind of fun in l A.
No I did it in Tokyo. Could it could be
(17:03):
there there? I mean they definitely have them all over.
You were in Tokyo for what? Oh, you went on
a trip with with one of your ex friends. That's
what we'll call them. Um. Yeah, yeah, we hiked Mount
Fuji and we went to Tokyo. I mean, in place
is just so cool. Oh my god, it's so fun.
(17:25):
Tokyo is such a great such a great city. It's
so clean, and you can get anything in a vending machine.
And you know what else I love is that you
can go to like a little like convenience stores and
get really good um sushi and good what are those
what are those little sandwiches called? They're almost like triangles.
I don't know. After hand roll, I'm done, I don't
(17:47):
I don't know. I wish I wish I knew more
about it. I wish I really knew the intricacies of
it better, and I wish I could make it better.
You know what became kind of a thing when I
when I was at school there there's um the sushi
burrito trucks. I cannot get behind it. It does not
taste good to me. I'm not into that fusion. I mean,
(18:10):
you know, Mexican or cal Max and sushi should stay
in their own lanes. Do you think? The Other thing
I like what that Nobu does is he does like
some really cool appetizer dishes, you know, like very thinly
(18:32):
sliced yellow tail with hallopaniods of sauce. They do something
kill a new style, which is like when they take
slices of it could be like it could be yellow tail,
could be They do a lot with salmon or fluke
or something like that, and they take this warm vinigrette
that has like sesame oil soy sauce. I don't even
know what else. I mean, I'm not I just don't know,
but it's like definitely SESAMEI oil and then like some
(18:55):
chives or scallions and they heat it up and then
they just pour the hot finigrette over the fit so
it just kind of slightly cooks it. That's one of
my favorite techniques that they do because I just kind
of love that active action where the dressing is warm
and it's just slightly cooking the fish. I think. I
(19:15):
think it's a cool technique I've done. I've actually been
inspired by that when some things that I've done before,
like I did some of that stuff like at Shark,
Oh yeah, you made sushi at Shark, Well not yet.
I heard a great sushi chef, Kio. His name is Kio.
He you know, he's just, you know, again just one
of these people that are just masters at their craft.
(19:36):
And when you look at sushi chefs and they break
out their arsenal of knives, I look at my knife
set and I feel like it's an erector kit compared
to what these sushi chefs have. You know, their steel
is just so like it just seems so sharp and
so broken in and like there's like every knife has
(19:59):
its own story, you know, and uh, you know, they
have some weird shapes to them because they've been sharpened
so many times. And it's literally like when you talk
about tools of the trade, I mean, these sushi chefs
are like that's that's that's their foundation, what they're cutting
the fish with. It's really great. And so one of
(20:20):
the things we did was like Kio would make sushi rice,
and he would make some extra for me to make
like crispy rice dishes with. So we'd make like crispy
rice dishes with mushrooms or with black beans or sweet
potatoes and things like that to go as side dishes,
you know, with green onions and stuff like that with
the fish and so, and the sushi rice had like
(20:41):
this little sort of a little sweetness to it. It
had just it was like it had just the right
kind of bite to it and it would crisp up
really beautifully in a pan. So having like a sushi
chef on board in the restaurant was really valuable. Yeah, definitely.
Um I never went into the sushi shation itself. I
was basically it was not allowed in there. Not that
(21:02):
he was not that he was like that. I just
was like, this is your domain, sir. You don't want
me to hear this. This is obviously not classic and
this is definitely an American thing. But like you know,
every once in a while you go to a sushi
restaurant that isn't necessarily as high end as Nobu and
they're using like cream cheese into it. Yeah, that's they
(21:25):
call those Philly Philly rolls rolls. Ye. I mean, I mean, listen,
I'm not what I'm not. I mean, I'm only a
purist by by eating. But I don't know how to
make this stuff, so, you know. But that said, when
I want sushi, it's a piece of it's a slice
of pristine fish on a beautifully handcrafted rice. And like
(21:50):
a lot of places you go to, the guy says
to you, this is X Y and Z, no soy sauce.
Don't put soy sauce on it, right, Okay, But our
culture basically has us. You know, you see a lot
of people they take the sy sauce and they make
their own pond of soy sauce with like they put
(22:11):
a sabby in it, and and it's just like like
it's not that's really not what it's supposed to be happening,
you know, from a you know, from a purest standpoint.
A lot of times they don't want you to put
anything on it, or they'll just rub like a little
of their own sauce on into something and just put
like a like a brush of it on and then
(22:31):
they're like just eat it the way it is. You know,
it's really cool. I remember vaguely. You bring me to Nobu.
We were with a group of people when I was
really young, and you really wanted me to try like
all of the remember this, you were very young and
I was not having it. You're not having it. Look
(22:52):
at you now. I can't get enough once a week, yeah,
I know. But the other thing is that Japanese. Japanese
cuisine has a lot of cooked food as well. And
one of the things that Nobu does that I think
is so cool is he does like the crispy rock
shrimp appetizer with the spicy mayonnaise, and he does one
of the coolest dishes is the squid pasta. Have you
(23:13):
had that I don't think I have. It's not pasta
squid that looks like pasta. Oh no, it's fantastic. Yeah.
And then it's in like some soy situation. It's so good.
It's really really good. And they so they score it,
they score the squid so it looks like it's like
Rigby Tony or something, but it's it's it's squid. That's
(23:35):
so cool. You also like to go to Blue Ribbon Sushi, right,
Blue Ribbon Sushi is very good. But you know, I
know those guys that are Blue Ribbon, right, so it's
you know, it's Eric and Bruce there too, you know,
Jewish New Yorkers who started Blue Ribbon. You know, in
Blue Ribbon was like the original chef hangout from years ago.
And basically they're serving like amazing fried chicken and you know,
(23:58):
great meat dishes and things like that. Very American slash,
you know, I guess a French beat to it. Those
guys know exactly what they know and what they don't, Okay,
they're really really smart about it. And they opened a
Blue Ribbon Sushi and they hired amazing sushi chefs and
they just did they let those guys do what they do.
(24:21):
And that's what you need to do, is let the
people that know what they're doing do what they're doing.
Don't get in their way, don't get in Kio's way,
get his way. Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay
and Sophie Flay. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Always
(24:42):
Hungry is produced, edited and mixed by Jonathan hoss Dress
There Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more
podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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