Masa
| "My job the same as carpenter. What kind of house you want to build? What kind of food you want to make? You think your ingredients, your structure. Simple. Japanese restaurants mix in some other style of food and call it influence, right? I don't like that. In Japanese sushi restaurants, a lot of sushi chefs talk too much. 'This fish from there,' 'This very expensive.' Same thing, start singing. And a lot have that fish case in front of them, cannot see what chef do. I'm not going to hide anything, right?" |
| – Masa Takayama describing his cooking style |
In 2004, Takayama opened his own eponymous restaurant in New York City. Located in recently constructed Time Warner Center, it had a 26-seat dining area. The idea for the location came from fellow chef and admirer, Thomas Keller, who was opening his own restaurant, Per Se, in the complex. Continuing the ideas he developed in Los Angeles, he continued to serve only an omakase menu, tracking his customers' meals and reactions, and sourced 90% of his fish from Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market.
Restaurant Masa garnered the Michelin Guide's highest rating starting in the 2009 edition and was the first Japanese restaurant in the U.S. to do so. It is one of only seven restaurants in New York City to currently hold a four out of four star rating by The New York Times. It has also received five out of five stars in the Forbes Travel Guide (formerly known as the Mobil Guide).
A second Bar Masa opened in the newly built Aria Resort & Casino in CityCenter on the Las Vegas Strip in December 2009. The restaurant also included Shaboo, an upscale omakase-style shabu-shabu dining room that charges approximately $500 per person without drinks.
Takayama was married to Hisako, who was a Japanese native studying English in America when they met at an Orange County sushi bar where he worked briefly in 1978. Together they had three children before separating. He plays golf, runs marathons and is also a potter who designed the plates at Masa, along with the wooden sake cups; he sculpted the other sake cups from bamboo. He currently lives in a $4.8 million, four bedroom and four and a half bath town house on West 92nd Street.
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