Nobu’s Offspring Still Know How to Party
在纽约Nobu餐厅，享用精致的日式盛宴

There was a time when there was only one Nobu, on Hudson Street in TriBeCa. When it opened in 1994, it was the first restaurant outside Los Angeles to offer Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s startling new liaison of sushi and other Japanese food with Peruvian flavors. The herds of imitators were still to come.

曾几何时，Nobu餐厅全世界只有一家，在翠贝卡(TriBeCa)街区的哈德逊街。1994年开业时，洛杉矶以外只有在这里能吃到主厨松久信幸(Nobuyuki Matsuhisa)那些令人惊叹的出品：他给寿司和其他日本食物加入了秘鲁风味。这在日后将引来众多效仿者。

If you wanted to try raw yellowtail in ponzu under a green jalapeño wheel, or fried rock shrimp shimmering with spiced mayonnaise, or broiled black cod in miso so sweet it might have been maple syrup — and for a few years it seemed as if that was all anybody wanted — you either went to Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills, Calif., or you went to Hudson Street.

如果你想吃泡在柚子醋里、上面摆着一个墨西哥绿辣椒圈的生黄尾鱼；或者用辣味蛋黄酱亮色的炸岩虾；或者用甜如枫糖浆的味噌腌过的烤黑鳕鱼——有那么几年似乎每个人都只想吃这些——要么去加州贝弗利山的Matsuhisa，要么就去哈德逊街。

Now you can eat Nobu ceviche in Dubai, Budapest and Cape Town. If you want Nobu sashimi salad for dinner followed by a night in a Nobu hotel, you can do that in Marbella, Manila, Miami or Palo Alto. When the United States Space Force establishes its first lunar base, the generals and majors will no doubt find a Nobu there, with tuna tataki on the menu and a line three-deep at the bar.

现在你可以在迪拜、布达佩斯和开普敦吃到Nobu的酸橘汁腌鱼。如果晚餐想吃Nobu的鱼生沙拉，然后在Nobu酒店过夜，你在西班牙的马贝拉、菲律宾的马尼拉，在迈阿密和帕洛阿尔托都可以做到。当“美国太空军”建立第一个月球基地时，将军和少校们无疑会在那里找到一个Nobu，菜单上有金枪鱼寿司，吧台前的人里三层外三层。

This is because after the success of Nobu in TriBeCa, Mr. Matsuhisa and his partners made a strategic decision. The food would stay roughly the same — more on this in a minute — but the surroundings would grow bigger, boozier, louder, more theatrical. If Nobu did not exactly invent the Asian Party Temple restaurant genre, it certainly drew the blueprints.

这是因为在翠贝卡Nobu餐厅成功之后，松久信幸和他的合伙人做出了一个战略决定。菜品会保持大致相同——这方面等一下细说，但空间会变得更大，酒更多，更吵，更戏剧化。虽说“亚洲聚会寺庙”这个餐厅类型不能算是Nobu独创，但蓝图肯定是它画出来的。

At these new Nobus, Mr. Matsuhisa’s food was still a major event, but not necessarily the main event. And the question was not just whether you felt like eating at Nobu but whether you felt like being at Nobu. The Malibu location in particular has a reputation for intense good-time vibes that can drive away customers who merely want to eat.

在这些新的Nobu餐厅，松久信幸的食物仍然是一个重要因素，但不一定是主要因素。问题不只是你是否想在Nobu餐厅吃饭，而是你是否想在Nobu餐厅待着。尤其是马里布店的地理位置——以极好的休闲氛围而闻名，这种氛围可以赶走只是想吃饭的顾客。

All this was encapsulated for me in two brief scenes from my recent meals at Nobu Downtown and Nobu Fifty Seven. The first episode took place while I was sitting at the sushi bar of Nobu Downtown. This location, inside the old AT&T tower on Lower Broadway, is theoretically the successor to the first Nobu; it opened last year a few weeks after the original closed. The sushi bar was the heart of the TriBeCa restaurant. The chefs behind it prepared or touched at least half the food, and seats there were so coveted that during the 1990s, when even celebrities complained about how hard it was to get in, a mostly sushi restaurant called Next Door Nobu was opened simply to contain the overflow. (It closed last year, too, and won’t be replaced.)

这一切都浓缩在我最近在纽约Nobu下城店和Nobu 57吃饭的两个简短场景中。第一个场景是我坐在Nobu下城店的寿司吧前。这家店位于下百老汇老AT&T大厦里，理论上是第二家Nobu餐厅；去年，在最初的Nobu关门几周后，它就开张了。寿司吧是翠贝卡店的中心，至少一般的菜品是吧台后的厨师们制备或经手的。那里的座位是如此炙手可热，以至于在上世纪90年代，连名人们都抱怨很难进去。当时开了一家以寿司为主的餐厅“隔壁Nobu”(Next Door Nobu)，就为了分流应付不过来的顾客。（此店去年也关门了，不会有新址。)

At Nobu Downtown, the upstairs sushi counter is on the far side of the cocktail bar that the design firm Rockwell Group slipped in among the enormous fluted limestone columns that fill the building’s ground floor like a petrified forest. I had just eaten a piece of Japanese scallop sushi with a dangerous streak of wasabi when an animated group of four new arrivals appeared next to me. The sushi chefs eyed them warily, because they appeared to intend to cluster around a single stool, the way people do at a bar. Soon it became apparent that they thought they were at the bar. But the people they mistook for bartenders were all busy slicing raw fish, so eventually the group moved on to look for somebody to make them a drink.

在Nobu下城店，楼上的寿司台在鸡尾酒吧台的另一边，设计公司罗克韦尔集团(Rockwell Group)在有凹槽的石灰石柱之间塞进了这张吧台——大厦一楼有许多这样的石柱，像是一个石化了的森林。我刚刚吃了一块日本扇贝寿司，铤而走险搭配了大量山葵，就在这时，一群活跃的新来者出现在我身边。寿司师傅警惕地盯着他们，因为他们似乎打算全部聚在一张凳子周围，就像人们会在酒吧里做的那样。但是他们误以为是酒保的那些人都在忙着切生鱼，所以这群人最终离开了，继续寻找能给他们调酒的人。

Moments like this didn’t tend to happen at the original Nobu, but they do bring Nobu Downtown in line with Nobu Fifty Seven. In business on 57th Street since 2005, Nobu Fifty Seven is another two-story proposition. Between 5 and 7 p.m. its ground-floor lounge acts on young Midtown professionals like the fishing nets evoked by Rockwell Group’s design. At the time the second scene took place, the bartenders looked as if they were struggling not to get caught. My cocktail, a Negroni-esque thing with sake in it that was ferried to my upstairs table from the downstairs bar, was neither shaken nor stirred; it was, in fact, almost hot.

在最早那家Nobu通常不会出现这样的时刻，但是在纽约Nobu下城店和Nobu 57确实会。两层楼的Nobu 57从2005年开始在57街营业。下午5点到7点之间，它的一楼大堂对于中城的年轻白领来说就像渔网一样——罗克韦尔对这家店的设计也令人想起渔网。到第二波客人进店时，酒保们看起来好像在努力不被客人抓到。我的鸡尾酒是种类似尼克罗尼(Negroni)的东西，里面有清酒，从楼下的吧台被送到我楼上的桌子上。它既没有摇，也没搅；事实上，酒几乎是烫的。

While I was waiting for the cocktail to be cooled by its single ice cube, a server was struggling to open a bottle of Champagne for a table of at least 10 men next to me. When the cork came out, he managed to spray the room in a manner usually seen in the Super Bowl champions’ locker room. Everybody nearby got a little wet, including me and my guests, but nobody seemed to notice.

当我在等待鸡尾酒被里面唯一的一块冰冷却的时候，服务员正努力为我旁边坐着至少10个男人的桌子打开一瓶香槟。当软木塞出来后，他把酒喷了一房间，就像是在超级碗冠军更衣室里开瓶一样。附近的每个人都有点湿，包括我和我的客人，但似乎没人注意到。

Servers at both addresses have the brisk, well-drilled, impersonal and slightly numbed quality that comes of waiting on hundreds of people a day. At Nobu Fifty-Seven, one told me, “Our menu is kaiseki style, so it’s like tapas. Everything is meant for sharing.” I must have looked confused because he added, “Some dishes are going to be bigger than others.”

这两家店的服务生都有一种因为每天接待数百人而形成的轻快、训练有素、冷漠、有点麻木的品质。在Nobu 57，一个服务生告诉我，“我们的菜单是怀石料理式的，就像西班牙小菜一样，一切都是分食的。”我当时看上去一定很困惑，因为他补充说，“有些菜品会比其他的菜分量大。”

Nobu Fifty-Seven was given three stars in its last New York Times review, by Frank Bruni in 2005. That’s what Ruth Reichl gave the original in 1995. After three recent visits to each location, I decided that, apart from minor menu variations, any qualitative difference in the food between the two branches is too subtle for me to make out.

上一次《纽约时报》点评Nobu 57时，弗兰克·布鲁尼(Frank Bruni)给了它三星。1995年时，露丝·雷克尔(Ruth Reichl)也给了第一家Nobu餐厅同样的分数。在最近去了每家分店各三次后，我认为，除了小的菜单变化，我看不出两家分店在食物上任何质的区别。

The chefs uptown are Taku Sato and Matt Hoyle. Downtown was led by Ricky Estrellado and Ryo Hasegawa until June, when Mr. Estrellado died suddenly. His successor has not been named. Both kitchens are models of superior ingredient shopping and consistent performance. When those classic Nobu dishes appear, they will be exactly like the last time you had them. In the case of the mayo-bathed fried shrimp, that may not be an entirely good thing. And I still think the flavor of the caviar that crowns tuna, or salmon, or yellowtail tartare gets elbowed out of the way by the wasabi-soy sauce.

在上城的厨师是卓江佐藤（Taku Sato，音）和麦特·霍伊尔(Matt Hoyle)。下城店之前是由里奇·埃斯特雷拉多(Ricky Estrellado)和长谷川亮(Ryo Hasegawa)主管，但埃斯特雷拉多在6月突然去世。他的继任者尚未公布。这两个厨房都是高档食材采购和一贯优秀表现的典范。当那些Nobu招牌菜出现的时候，它们会和你上次吃的一模一样。对于沾满蛋黄酱的炸虾来说，这可能不完全是一件好事。我仍然认为金枪鱼、鲑鱼或黄尾鞑靼鱼子酱的味道会被山葵酱油盖过。

But the tiradito, slices of yellowtail squirted with lemon and yuzu juice, then dotted with puréed rocoto pepper, is always wonderfully bracing. The candylike black cod is as hard to deny as ever, even if the extra sweetening Mr. Matsuhisa gives this traditional Japanese dish strikes me as somewhat shameless. The sashimi salad and the lobster shiitake salads are both better than any salad from a global chain has the right to be.

不过，那道柠檬汁鱼条，几片黄尾鱼挤上柠檬和柚子汁，再点缀上番椒泥，总是完美地令人神清气爽。糖果一般的黑鳕鱼令人难以拒绝，虽然松久给这道传统日本菜加了额外的甜味，让我觉得有点不知羞耻。鱼生沙拉和龙虾香菇沙拉的品质，要高出任何一家有资格号称国际连锁的餐馆的沙拉出品。

I don’t know who orders the dishes marked Nobu Now, but I tried a few. Umami Chilean sea bass: not worth it, even for the slightly exotic return of a fish that hasn’t been seen much since the ’90s. Kumamoto shooters: a thrilling series of flavors that will recall the way you felt the first time you ate at Nobu. Michele Goldsmith’s desserts, served both uptown and downtown, are modern and playful and don’t try too hard to follow the theme, whatever that is.

我不知道是谁点了标有“Nobu此刻”的菜，但我尝试了几个。鲜味智利鲈鱼：不值得吃，即使它是90年代以后很难见到的一种鱼，有点异国情调回归的感觉。熊本射手：一连串令人兴奋的味道，让人想起第一次在Nobu吃饭的感觉。米歇尔·戈德史密斯(Michele Goldsmith)的甜点，在上城和下城都有，有点现代和俏皮的感觉，没有过分使劲去遵循主题——虽说也不太清楚到底是什么主题。

Over the years, the Hudson Street Nobu became something unusual, a restaurant that could serve tourists and families from around the corner with equal aplomb. But a meal at Nobu is still among the best, although not the cheapest, ways to introduce children to raw fish. And sitting at the sushi bar can still provide the intimacy that the rest of the place lacks. The chefs behind the counter may not draw the kinmedai cultists who flock to Sushi Zo or Sushi Ginza Onodera, but they know what they’re doing, and they light up when they get a customer who can tell.