NOBU
Crown Complex
Southbank, Melbourne
03 9696 6566

It was yet another of those pointless ‘Desert Island list’ games. Which five albums would you take with you if you were shipwrecked? Which three books?  Who would you like to be cast away with?

Our variation is the inevitable foodie one: What would you order for your last meal on earth?

(It was depressing to read recently that most men on Death Row in the United States go for fried chicken, hamburgers and pizza. You wouldn’t exactly be worrying about your waistline or your cholesterol count).

Mine was always Japanese-oriented. Dark, deep sea tuna sashimi with soy and wasabi. Some oysters from Coffin Bay (appropriate for Death Row). And thin slices of beef for self-cooked shabu shabu in a kelp broth with Japanese mushrooms and tofu and cabbage. And some genuine New Zealand whitebait fritters made only with beaten eggs and their own juice as a holdover from the place of my birth.

Accompanied by some chilled sake and a bottle of Grange.

A dinner at Nobu the other night changed my Last Supper menu but only slightly. I’d trade the shabu shabu for Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s sublime black cod from Japan with miso and a ginger stick.

Admittedly, the setting was perfect for anybody’s last meal on this planet. Nobu was in town on a flying three-day visit to check out the progress of the eponymous restaurant he opened last year with partners Robert De Niro and James Packer.

‘Things are never entirely comfortable at the start in a new territory. This is the case whether the restaurant is in London, Tokyo, New York or Melbourne.  But here, things are made easier by the fact that you have beautiful fish available, and all the fresh produce is excellent. There is very little we have to import’.

I went to the opening with about 600 other people last year and after playing sardines for a couple of drinks I asked Mrs. Nosebag if she’d like to go somewhere else for dinner and we scuttled to the quiet but airy safety of Dish at the Royce Hotel.

 This time, Crown’s indefatigable Ann Peacock held a dinner party for ten in a private room with Nobu riding herd in the kitchen. It was the first time I had dined there. It won’t be the last.

The Yellowtail Sashimi with jalapeno is a signature dish. Nobu has also perfected the improbably named Sashimi Tacos. It sounds like Toranaga meets Pancho Villa but it works.  Crisp, fragile mini-Taco shells house, variously, morsels of raw Atlantic salmon, yellowtail, crab and lobster.

I’d never heard of the combination but several nights later they were serving Lobster Tacos, with salsa, as a $25 entrée at JJ’s upstairs.

For nibbles we had bowls of dry-fried and salted sweet peas in the pod and then, one of the night’s favourites for me, the lightest, sweetest, Baby Tiger Prawns in a brush of Tempura batter.

The small communal plates kept coming … Beef Toban Yaki, assorted sushi rolls and my ‘death wish dish,’ the nigh-caramalised Black Cod with miso.

There was a nutty chocolate dessert called Chocolate Satandangi served with Green Tea ice cream and throughout the night warm sake was poured into small bamboo cups from tall bamboo cylanders.

I don’t know what our meal cost but despite it’s 24-carat reputation some of the shock! Horror! price stories are unfair.  You can pay $40 for a lobster dish or a beef tenderloin but that’s not unusual these days and the $10 oyster (the tabloids raved on about) did have real caviar on it.

There are a lot of small dishes under $10 and many are between $13 and $20.Not being a drinker, I wasn’t exposed to the Fort Knox prices on Nobu’s wine list.

Not long after Nobu opened the Herald Sun’s Stephen Downes gave it only 13 out of 20. But then, recently, he was orgasmic about Bistro Guillaume and wouldn’t give it a 17.

Maybe his Nobu experience got off on the wrong foot. He started his review by saying: ‘My mugshot is Blu-Tacked to Nobu’s kitchen wall. That’s fine. Other restaurants do it. But am I asking too much to get my name right?  Not too much. Just precious, Stephen.

Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, wearing another hat, is a sometime actor. He’s been in movies like Memoirs of a Geisha, Austin Powers and Casino. But he is, understandably, best known as a chef. And  Nobu is a class act.