How Masa Takayama Created a Culinary Empire on His Own Terms
Observer · · g2643743
At Tobi Masa, Takayama reflects on the risks, reinventions and uncompromising approach that shaped a restaurant career spanning Los Angeles, New York and London.
Masa Takayama is full of stories. In the span of an hour, the Japanese chef reflects on serving Marlon Brando , hosting the meeting between Quentin Tarantino and John Travolta that led to Pulp Fiction , and losing out on two Michelin stars because he changed the name of one of his restaurants. But despite these tales, Takayama, one of the most acclaimed sushi chefs and restaurateurs in New York, is decidedly humble. He shrugs off accolades, explaining that he’s just interested in making good food in his style.
“I’m not doing this in an old-school, traditional way,” Takayama, 72, tells Observer, speaking from his London restaurant Tobi Masa in late September. “I don’t like that way. But I always have a reason behind it. It’s still part of Japanese cuisine, but it’s my own.”
Takayama is best known for helming Masa , a two-Michelin-starred omakase restaurant in New York’s 10 Columbus Circle. Lunch there starts at $495 per person, and dinner at the counter, where Takayama is running the show, starts at a hefty $950 per person. Last year, he debuted Tobi Masa in the new Chancery Rosewood hotel in London, offering a slightly more accessible way to experience his signature dishes via an à la carte menu or a £295 omakase. He also owns New York’s Bar Masa , which serves his dishes in a similarly less formal way, and Kappo Masa , a collaboration with the Gagosian Gallery.
Over the years, Takayama has opened and closed numerous restaurants. After moving from Tokyo to Los Angeles, he debuted his first U.S. sushi spot, Saba-ya, in 1980. He opened his second, Ginza Sushiko, in L.A. in 1987. It became a staple of the city, attracting numerous celebrity customers, but Takayama sold the restaurant in 2002 to move to New York for Masa. Other concepts, including Tetsu, haven’t survived. But the chef feels his career is in a stable place, particularly as he celebrates the one-year anniversary of Tobi Masa.
“It was in Los Angeles that I established my philosophy and my ideas,” he says. “Now here in London, we have the same philosophy and ideas, but with totally different ingredients. I had to figure out how to make beautiful food for local people, and it felt like a new challenge. The great thing is that London has amazing fruit, vegetables, seafood, like scallops and oysters.”
In New York, Takayama can fly all his fish in from Japan. It arrives via passenger plane from Tokyo’s Toyosu Market two or three days a week, always at peak freshness. If a storm prevents the planes from coming in, Masa will cancel its reservations. “We can’t do it via cargo,” Takayama notes. “Cargo takes two days. Our fish is as fresh as it can be.”
U.K. regulations mean that fish can’t be imported from Japan. Takayama’s team lobbied the embassy to make an exception for the chef when Tobi Masa was opening, but the request was declined. Instead, he makes the most of Europe’s products, including scallops from Scotland, tuna from Spain and squid from Cornwall. The squid dish is unique to the London menu. Takayama discovered the product while dining at Brat and created a simple but flavorful presentation with garlic and jalapeño. “The squid itself is so delicious,” the chef says. “We wanted to show that.”
Most guests come to Tobi Masa for Takayama’s longtime signatures, including the toro tartare caviar, a dish that is half fatty tuna and half caviar. The restaurant also serves three iterations of his Masa pasta, a gluten-free pasta created with fish rather than flour. Takayama created it more than 20 years ago for Kappo Masa after noticing so many fashionable women walking up and down Madison Avenue.
“I was thinking about what they would want to eat,” he recalls. “I wondered what kind of menu would work in this specific location. In Japanese history, particularly in Kyoto in the summertime, people eat hamo fish, which is conger eel. The meat is very pure white and very clean. They scrape it and grind it with a wooden stick until it’s a very smooth paste. Add some starch and salt, and pass it through a very fine strainer. That’s it.”
Takayama’s version is also made with white fish. It has an al dente texture that feels identical to pasta. Guests can order it with tomato and shrimp, cacio e pepe sauce or caviar at Tobi Masa, and with shrimp, uni and caviar or surimi and serrano at Kappo Masa. At Masa, it’s part of the omakase. It is, perhaps, the original protein pasta, long before the trend. “We can mix anything in or create any sauce,” Takayama notes of the dish. “Sometimes we do squid ink noodles. Sometimes we do spinach noodles. In London, we use amazing local tomatoes.”
Even after so many years behind the chef’s counter, Takayama is always coming up with new ideas. He doesn’t want to get stuck in tradition—it’s that sense of discovery that keeps him going, although he often draws on his background training in Ginza under sushi master Sugiyama Toshiaki . The chef is proud that he’s taken risks.
“We do a nigiri with foie gras,” he explains. “No one did that. And in Beverly Hills, I served shabu shabu with thinly sliced foie gras. I had the inspiration when a guest brought me a very fresh monkfish liver from Iceland. But it was hard to get monkfish liver in Los Angeles, so I moved on to foie gras, and I still use it. It’s in a taco here in London, too.”
Another of Takayama’s innovations is his database of customer visits. He knows when each person has dined at Masa and what dishes they were served. When they return, he endeavors not to repeat anything, unless it’s by request. One guest has come to Masa around 600 times. But Takayama says that just pushes him to be creative.
“I don’t want to make the same stuff,” the chef says. “If someone has a favorite, we do repeat it again. It can be down to the season and what kind of fish we have in. I don’t always serve different things if someone has come a lot, but I try.”
While Masa is undeniably successful, particularly with the finance set, Takayama admits that running a restaurant—or several restaurants—isn’t easy. Rent in New York is particularly expensive, and he still struggles to find good staff post-Covid-19.
“New restaurants are opening all the time,” he says. “It’s always, ‘This is opening. This is opening.’ But to stay long in New York is very hard. There’s a lot of competition. There are a lot of sushi restaurants in New York. It’s very expensive, so everyone has to raise their prices.”
Takayama values training his staff, even if it’s sometimes hard to get the right people in. Countless sushi chefs have learned from him (he jokes that his toro caviar dish is now on menus around the world), and he hopes to instill the value of ongoing education. His own early training lasted eight years, but he says that’s not the norm in restaurants today.
“With every single young chef. I want them to grow,” Takayama says. “Sooner or later, they’re going to have their own restaurant. I want to teach them what is important. It’s not just slicing the fish and putting it on the rice. When you make the rice, there are different textures and vinegars. You have to be sensitive taste-wise and texture-wise. And know how much pressure to put on the fish. How thick or thin to cut each fish. Those details are important.”
He also teaches younger chefs how to read the customer. Elderly diners tend to eat less, but Takayama wants them to feel like they can finish the omakase, so he uses less rice in their nigiri. “I make it almost half the size,” he explains. “That, too, is a technique. You want to make sure everybody gets to finish the meal to the end.”
The chef, who estimates he’s now made more than one million nigiri in his career, wants every customer to feel seen. Some return on a regular basis, and others save up for months for the experience of dining at Masa. The most important thing he’s learned is how to interact with his guests. “Don’t ask someone if [the person they are with] is their wife,” he says. “It might be their girlfriend or their mistress. No personal questions. Respect the customer. Just ask regular questions and have a chat.”
Not all of Takayama’s customers have been friendly. He counted Brando as a regular at Saba-ya, although he says the famous actor never directly spoke to him and always ordered through their mutual friend, who accompanied him. Others, like Tarantino, have been his pals. He recounts a story about a time Warren Beatty sent a group of rude guests on their way after they questioned the high menu prices at one of Takayama’s L.A. restaurants.
“I told them it was $450 and they kept saying, ‘Why?’” the chef recounts. “Warren stood up and said, ‘This is a private club.’ And they left. So, things like that have happened. A lot of things have happened. People keep saying I need to write a book.”
For Takayama, success simply means keeping all of his diners happy. He doesn’t care about reviews or Michelin stars (Masa lost its third star in 2025 after holding the accolade for 15 years). And, of course, he has a story about the owner of Michelin coming in for a meal at Masa in 2009.
“He was very arrogant,” Takayama says. “The restaurant was very busy. At one point, he said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ I said, ‘Oh, you make tires. In Japan, Bridgestone is much bigger than your company.’ Those rating companies are like parasites. I want to make good food in my style. I’m not going to change for them.”
If all goes according to plan, Takayama will keep honing his style. He wants to open more restaurants, although he’s very discerning about the locations he selects. He isn’t able to share news about specific openings, but he hints that one “maybe” is coming in 2027. “It helps to keep me young to have new ventures,” he says. “After success, older people settle, and then there’s not much else. I want to keep going.”