Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe welcomed President Barack Obama to Tokyo Wednesday by taking him to the greatest sushi restaurant in the world, the three Michelin star Sukiyabashi Jiro. The unassuming restaurant is located in the basement of an office building off a subway station and seats just 10 people at a time at a long bar. It is owned and operated by Jiro Ono, who turns 90 next year, who has been learning and perfecting the art of sushi since the age of nine, with Jiro’s eldest son, Yoshikazu Ono, pitching in. Their restaurant was popularized by Anthony Bourdain’s television show No Reservations, and gained mythical status after the 2011 release David Gelb’s documentary film Jiro Dreams of Sushi. What makes this sushi so good? First off, the ingredients. Each morning Yoshikazu bikes to the Tsukiji fish market to select fish and seafood to his and his father’s exacting standards. In the film, the restaurant’s tuna dealer (they have a prefered vendor for each seafood variety) scoffs at an array of beautiful tuna, “People say there is good quality here today—there is nothing good here today.”

Jiro has his own special rice vinegar for the sushi rice. “It has good body and is both mild and sharp,” the restaurant website explains. “Although its degree of vinegar is high, it does not have that pungent smell of vinegar. sushi girl online subtitrat gratisThis is the perfect rice vinegar for sushi.”sushi grade fish tuscaloosa Next, there’s the technique. sushi las condes cantagalloJiro’s apprentices train for at least ten years, and don’t slice anything until they first learn how to hold the fish. In the film, Jiro explains how he came to prepare the perfect octopus, saying his apprentices used to massage it for 30 minutes before cooking it. Now, it’s massaged for 45 minutes. The seaweed is hand-toasted over charcoals.

Jiro or Yoshikazu hand-form each individual dish, applying just the right amount of soy sauce or salt to bring the seafood closer to perfection. Jiro has spent decades mastering the proper temperature to serve sushi. The rice is maintained at body temperature, while the toppings are kept different ideal temperatures for the specific preparation. The seafood itself could be marinated or aged for days depending on the specific fish to meet Jiro’s standards.While Obama and Abe were in the restaurant for 90 minutes, the average Jiro meal last little more than 20 minutes. Immediately after each bite-sized dish is consumed, the next is placed on the wiped-down plate. The sushi is eaten with your hands, and there’s no additional soy sauce or wasabi to apply. It’s perfection, as determined by Jiro. There is only one menu at Jiro’s restaurant, his. The 30,000-yen Chef’s Recommended Special Course. And the drink list is spare: beer, or Japanese sake (though tea is also served.)

Moreover, getting a seat at the restaurant is notoriously difficult. Reservations are taken one month in advance beginning at the first of the previous month and are usually gone in a matter of hours. At current exchange rates, the quick meal puts a large dent in the wallet, costing nearly $300, though this is down from more than $400 when the dollar was weaker against the Yen. Joining Obama and Abe were US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy and national security adviser Susan Rice. On his way out, Obama told reporters, “That’s some good sushi right there.”David Gelb's mouth-watering documentary takes us downstairs at a Tokyo metro station, where 85-year-old masterchef Jiro Ono is quietly devoting his life to sushi perfection Watch Jiro: Dreams of Sushi here Click here to put a question to director David Gelb in a live webchat Reading on a mobile? Click here to watch video One of the best lines in Jiro Dreams of Sushi could have come straight out of another great Japanese film – Tampopo, the brilliant "noodle western" that is the funniest film ever made about food.

Where Tampopo was a satirical paean to ramen, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a fascinating documentary about a Michelin three-star restaurant in Tokyo, called Jiro, which serves top-quality sushi – and only top-quality sushi – starting at 30,000 yen (£210) for a 20-piece tasting course. A food critic quips that, because the meal can be eaten in only a quarter of an hour, Jiro is minute-for-minute the most expensive restaurant in the world. Yet with its 10 seats, total lack of decor and bizarre location in a featureless, fluorescent-lit corridor down a set of stairs in Ginza metro station, Jiro is as unassuming as its master chef, 85-year-old Jiro Ono. For 75 uninterrupted years, since before the outbreak of the second world war, every day except for national holidays and the occasional Sunday, Jiro has spent all of his time devoted to doing just one thing: making sushi. "I wasn't much of a father," Jiro says. "More of a stranger." His dedication to his tradecraft is guaranteed to put you and everyone you know to shame.

In Jiro's regime, apprentices – one of whom is his eldest son Yoshi, who at 50 is considered still too green to take over the family business – must spend 10 years learning to use their knives before they're allowed to cook even eggs. To become a shokunin, a skilled craftsman, someone who does the same exact thing every day to the highest possible level in the neverending pursuit of perfection. We meet a cast of obsessives – the rice guy, the shrimp guy – who lead us to the film's centrepiece, the great singing tuna auctioneers of Tsukiji fish market. With the market about to be moved to a soulless new venue, this section of the film amounts to a historically important bit of documentary. And if you don't want to punch the air yourself when Jiro leans forward with 75 years of fire in his eyes and fervently extols the "harmony of fish, sushi rice and soy sauce", then your blood runs colder than anago.Story highlightsOn Wednesday night, U.S. President Obama dined at what many consider the world's best sushi restaurantChef Jiro Ono is the first sushi chef in the world to receive three Michelin starsThe 19-piece "Chef's Recommended Special Course" costs 30,000 yen (about $292)Anyone who imagines U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discussed territorial disputes with China or the U.S.'s "pivot to Asia" foreign policy during their private dinner in Tokyo on Wednesday likely isn't

familiar with the restaurant where the two leaders dined. Ahead of a protocol-bound formal state visit that officially begins on Thursday, Abe took Obama to Sukiyabashi Jiro, the fabled restaurant in Tokyo's fashionable Ginza district widely regarded as the best sushi restaurant in the world.The Japanese food provided by head chef and proprietor Jiro Ono leaves little time for small talk, much less big talk. MORE: The rival empires of Japanese WhiskeyRather than simply watch the spectacular food porn that is Gelb's doc, I went a step further, traveling directly to the source to offer the following account of chef Jiro's legendary soft-handed, two-fingered technique that pairs fresh nigiri cuts from the Tsukiji fish market with warm and delicate rice.MORE: Celebrating Tokyo as 'world's greatest city'With a bit of hesitation, I forgo chopsticks, soy sauce and wasabi altogether for the traditional fingers-only approach and prepare to enjoy that first taste of perfection.MORE: Tasting Tokyo's treasures MORE: Tokyo and the world's 11 other greatest shopping citiesMORE: How to eat sushiMORE: Tokyo travel: 11 things to know before you goMORE: 5 Tokyo bars for train nerds (yes, they exist)MORE: Why Japanese bartenders are the world's best