What’s on the menu at Nobu Toronto, the luxury restaurant’s first Canadian location

Name: Nobu Toronto Contact: 25 Mercer St., 365-922-8800, noburestaurants.com/toronto, @nobutoronto
Neighbourhood: Entertainment District Owner: Madison Group Chef: Corporate executive chef Nobu Matsuhisa, executive chef Alex Tzatzos and sushi chef Samuel Leung Accessibility: Fully accessible

Both 2 Chainz and Drake rap about Nobu, Kim Kardashian lives for their lychee martinis, and Leonardo DiCaprio, Demi Moore, Taylor Swift and the Biebers visit regularly. Since the original Tribeca location opened in 1994, Robert De Niro’s star power (he’s a co-founder) combined with chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s elegant Japanese-Peruvian plates have made Nobu the ultimate celebrity magnet. It’s so iconic that it even cameoed in Notting Hill.

What’s even more impressive is how Nobu has stayed buzzy and beloved by the glitterati while becoming a global chain. Usually, when restaurants expand (Nobu now has 56 locations, with its Wagyu dumplings served from Marrakech to Manila), they risk losing their lustre. But not Nobu—when its Toronto location opened, a month’s worth of reservations vanished faster than you can say “sushi.”

With TIFF around the corner, it’s no surprise that people want to score a table at Nobu’s second-storey restaurant. While some may be going for the world’s most famous miso black cod, others are likely stargazers hoping to spot their favourite celebrities. (Kyle Lowry was spied dining there during opening week, and Drake has also made an appearance.) Luckily, even if you don’t manage to snag a table upstairs, Canada’s first-ever Nobu accepts walk-ins at the bar—and what a bar it is. Occupying its own floor on the ground level, Nobu Bar is an opulent, vamp-chic space done up almost entirely in black, with an illuminated back bar that glows gold.

The Food

While there’s some overlap between the bar menu and the restaurant menu, expect small easy-to-nibble plates downstairs and larger family-style dishes upstairs. Of course, Nobu standards like black cod and sushi are on offer. However, part of Nobu’s special sauce is that each location has its own unique flavour. In Toronto, this means the addition of dishes like grilled lamb and charcoal-finished salmon. “We aim to let the ingredients speak for themselves,” says chef Alex Tzatzos, a Nobu alumnus who previously led the kitchen at Nobu London Old Park Lane.

His menu additions focus on luxe ingredients such as hokkaido scallops, house-aged rib-eye and truffle, with an emphasis on keeping the plates simple and clean. As Matsuhisa puts it, “Each Nobu property is inspired by the location and the culture of its people. What makes Nobu Toronto very unique is being surrounded by so many multicultural neighbourhoods. You will find not one influence but a celebration of diversity.”

The Drinks

The focus here is undoubtedly the cocktails and the sake. But fret not, oenophiles—there’s a robust and international wine list to peruse. In addition to by-the-glass options, you’ll find a mix of entry-level, below-$100 bottles (sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, rosé from Provence, malbec from Argentina) alongside more exciting rarities like a 2001 Château Margaux Bordeaux.

The Space

Whether they’re dining in the restaurant on the second storey or sipping martinis downstairs, guests enter via Nobu Bar on Mercer Street. Toronto design firm Studio Munge has masterfully blended minimalism and maximalism, using a gothic palette to create a setting that’s both striking and uncluttered. Massive 30-foot columns clad in undulating black clay tiles draw the eye to a double-height staircase crowned by Czech glass designer Lasvit’s oversized chainmail chandeliers, which—crafted from bronze to evoke kimono sleeves—are one of many subtle Nikkei details found throughout the 10,000-square-foot restaurant.

After ascending to the second floor, another host greets you, and there’s yet another bar to pass through before finally reaching the dining room. In decorating this antechamber, Studio Munge drew visual inspiration from the famous 1831 painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The tables and bar are topped with blue tempest quartzite, the stone’s ripples and veins evoking stormy waters. A textured white tunnel, conjuring the frothy spume of a crashing wave, leads to the heart of Nobu: a 140-seat dining room.

The dining room—designed to resemble an Edo-era Japanese courtyard—unfurls around an illuminated porcelain-and-brass ginkgo sculpture by Andreea Braescu. Circular blond elm beams, featuring intricate Japanese joinery, ripple around the art piece.“The intention was to have no one person at the centre of the dining room,” says director of marketing Alex Marconi. “You should feel like you’ve returned home to a buzzing room of familiar faces.”

An 11-seat sushi counter offers those keen for an omakase experience a chance to sit next to the sushi chefs as they expertly slice fish.

Here’s the 22-seat private dining room. Enclosed within bronze-tinted glass panels, it offers the perfect vantage for voyeurs keen to take in the Nobu Bar action below.

There’s also a 10-person private tasting room done up in dark cherrywood.