Visit the program websiteCheck local listings Premiering Monday, December 23, 2013 on Independent Lens. Check your local listings. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is the story of 85 year-old Jiro Ono, considered by many to be the world’s greatest sushi chef. Despite its humble appearances, it is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a prestigious 3 star Michelin review, and sushi lovers from around the globe make repeated pilgrimage, calling months in advance and shelling out top dollar for a coveted seat at Jiro’s sushi bar. For most of his life, Jiro has been mastering the art of making sushi, but even at his age he sees himself still striving for perfection, working from sunrise to beyond sunset to taste every piece of fish, meticulously training his employees, and carefully molding and finessing the impeccable presentation of each sushi creation. At the heart of this story is Jiro’s relationship with his eldest son Yoshikazu, the worthy heir to Jiro’s legacy, who is unable to live up to his full potential in his father’s shadow.

The feature film debut of director David Gelb, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family, and the art of perfection, chronicling Jiro’s life as both an unparalleled success in the culinary world, and a loving yet complicated father.sushi order online dubai Meet Four California Sushi Masterswhere to buy inari age Originally from New York City, David Gelb currently works and lives in Los Angeles. comprar comida online limaAfter graduating from USC's film production program, David worked on various music videos, short films, and documentaries. team buy sushi kai

Most notably, he directed A Vision of Blindness, an extensive behind the scenes look at Fernando Meirelles's film Blindness, which enjoyed a run on the Sundance Channel. David has been a sushi aficionado since his childhood. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is his first full-length feature film.where can i buy sushi nori Explore the elements in Jiro's world to learn more about sushi and the art of the shokunin, the Japanese master sushi chef. jiro dreams of sushi interviewFrom the different types of tuna to the importance of perfect rice, let Jiro be your guide in this interactive, illustrated feature.how to nigiri sushi How sushi-savvy are you? Do you know your sashimi from your nori? Test your knowledge of the art of the shokunin in this challenging quiz inspired by documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Chef Jiro's Secrets of Success Challenges with Shrimp and OctopusThis week Documentary Now! tells the tasty tale of a humble Colombian restaurant renowned for its chicken and rice dish and the father/son dynamics that ensue. Before you watch “Juan Likes Rice & Chicken,” grab some chopsticks and wasabi and bone up on the acclaimed 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the inspiration behind the latest masterpiece from Documentary Now!. Meet Jiro, Subway Sushi Master Jiro Dreams of Sushi follows 85-year-old Jiro Ono, an acclaimed master sushi chef who has devoted every waking moment to perfecting his culinary skills. Universally regarded as the greatest sushi chef in the world, Jiro earned the rare and coveted Three-Star Michelin Rating for his restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro — not too shabby for a 10-seat sushi joint in a Tokyo subway station. Director David Gelb originally planned to make a film focusing on multiple sushi chefs, but Jiro’s attention to detail (he travels great distances to select the perfect fish) made him a compelling subject.

Throughout the documentary, Jiro is shown to be very exacting in his cooking methods. Before they can touch the sushi, Jiro’s apprentices must learn how to properly hand squeeze the hot towels given to customers before their meals. You don’t see that kind of training at Applebee’s. Like Father, Like Son Jiro Dreams of Sushi explores the sushi apprenticeship of Jiro’s two sons, Yoshikazu and Takashi, and the pressure they’ve experienced having been born under the shadow of a man who is basically the Anthony Bourdain of sashimi. Elder brother Yoshikazu works alongside his father in the restaurant with the hopes that he will someday inherit Jiro’s business. Takashi, on the other hand, decides to cut Jiro’s apron strings and opens a sushi restaurant of his own. Needless to say, Jiro isn’t impressed. Jiro’s cuisine earns raves from food critics like Yamamoto, a Japanese guidebook writer who appears throughout the documentary. Yamamoto professes to being nervous every time he tries Jiro’s sushi (the chef’s constant stern expression might have something to do with it), and claims that master chefs around the world praise Jiro for the simplicity of his cuisine.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi triggered a flood of similar docs (like the wine snob favorite Somm) that your foodie friends can’t stop asking you if you’ve seen. (Gelb returned to the kitchen with the Netflix series Chef’s Table, which looks at the world’s top chefs behind closed kitchen doors.) Like Jiro, this new crop of “food porn” is brimming with loving, slow-motion sequences of food being prepared. Don’t watch on an empty stomach! , the IFC app and Apple TV.One of the hardest reservations to get in the world is a seat at Jiro Ono’s sushi counter, a three-Michelin-star restaurant adjoining the entrance to the Ginza metro station, in the basement of a business building in Tokyo. A meal there, which consists of twenty pieces of sushi served one at a time, costs thirty thousand Japanese yen (about three hundred and seventy dollars), and lasts about fifteen or twenty minutes. (By contrast, a meal at Noma, probably the toughest get on the list, takes a good three to four hours).

There are only ten seats, there is a set menu (no appetizers or modifications), and there are definitely no California rolls. The question of what makes this hole in the wall so worthy is the subject of a gorgeously shot documentary opening today called “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” directed by David Gelb. Jiro Ono was born in 1925, left home at the age of nine, and has been making sushi ever since. Though Japan has declared him a national treasure, he still says, at the age of eighty-five, “All I want to do is make better sushi.” He goes to work every day by getting on the train from the same position, he always tastes his food as he makes it, and he dislikes holidays. Jiro is described as a shokunin—a person who embodies the artisan spirit of the relentless pursuit of perfection through his craft. Another Japanese term that came to my mind while I watched the film was kaizen, meaning “improvement” or “change for the better.” The concept is one of process, and it is often applied in business settings, like manufacturing and logistics, to ensure constant and never-ending improvement.

Before cooking his octopus, Jiro used to massage it for up to thirty minutes. Now he will massage it for forty minutes, to give it an even softer texture and a better taste. Before a meal at Sukiyabashi Jiro, guests are handed a hot towel, hand-squeezed by an apprentice. The apprentices, who train for at least ten years under Jiro, are not allowed to cut the fish until they practice just handling it. One of the older apprentices says Jiro taught him to “press the sushi as if it were a baby chick.” Jiro’s near-impossible standards extend to the Tsukiji fish market, where his older son, Yoshikazu, bicycles every day to check out the day’s catch. He meets with trusted specialists, each of whom has his own focus: shrimp, eel, octopus. In one scene, a man wrestles a live octopus into a plastic bag, but not before the octopus makes a convincing run for it, suctioning itself rather alarmingly up the man’s forearm. Jiro’s tuna dealer is an anti-establishment character who tolerates only products of the highest quality.

At one point, he surveys a warehouse floor covered by giant, gaping tuna, whose gunmetal coloring makes them look like warheads or shrunken submarines. “People say there is good quality here today,” he says directly to the camera. Then he adds with a smirk, “There is nothing good here today.” By this point in the movie, it comes as no surprise that Jiro has his own rice dealer, or that his rice alone is revered by foodies for being expertly cooked, fanned, vinegared, and maintained at the perfect temperature. After a screening of the movie at the Japan Society this week, Eric Ripert said, “Never in my life have I tasted rice like that—it’s like a cloud.” (Ripert, an exacting French chef who travels with his own fish knives in a custom Louis Vuitton case, is a great admirer of Jiro, who reminds him of his own obsessive mentor, Joël Robuchon.) The rice is served at body temperature, because, according to Jiro, each ingredient has an ideal moment of deliciousness—as Ripert put it, “The rice is perfection now.”

When the sushi is placed in front of a customer, it must be consumed right away; hence, the fleeting nature of the meal. It wasn’t until after the movie was over, when an audience member asked about female sushi chefs, that I realized practically everyone in the film—from the apprentices to the chefs to the fishmongers—is male. During his visits to Japan, Gelb had heard a range of explanations for this, from the claim that women’s hands are too warm (they would cook the sushi just by handling it) to the idea that the hours were too long and it wouldn’t be safe for them to ride the train alone late at night. “It’s sexism, frankly,” Gelb said. When asked if he had anything to add on the topic, Ripert wisely answered, “No.” The audience seemed only mildly relieved to learn that there is gimmicky sushi bar in another neighborhood of Tokyo with all female chefs. Jiro has two sons, both sushi chefs—Yoshikazu, the older one, works under his father at Ginza station, and his younger brother, Takashi, runs his own branch of the restaurant, in Roppongi Hills.

The layout of the second location is an exact mirror image of the original, since Jiro is left-handed and Takashi is right-handed. As the elder son, Yoshikazu is expected to succeed his father when he dies or loses the physical ability to work. Gelb’s own filial dynamic explains at least part of his Japanophilia. His father, Peter, is now the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, but while David was very young Gelb père was the assistant manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. At the time, Seiji Ozawa was the conductor, which meant frequent family trips to Japan. It also certainly meant exposure to a great deal of music. Besides being visually captivating—some of the montages are veritable food-porn slide shows of glistening seafood—the film has a strong soundtrack of classical music, old and new. Philip Glass’s works appear throughout, and, for the film’s ultimate sushi montage, Gelb used Beethoven’s soaring Poco sostenuto vivace from Symphony No. 7. At the end of the film, when asked about Yoshikazu’s ability to succeed him, Jiro delivers an answer that is equal parts dad and shokunin: “He just needs to keep it up for the rest of his life.”