Here’s your Zen koan for today: Is it possible to create something so pure in its simplicity that it disappears?Sure it is, answers “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” a new documentary by David Gelb. Just come down to Jiro Ono’s tiny restaurant in the basement of a Tokyo office building, near the Ginza subway stop. There you will be presented with what many food connoisseurs consider the finest sushi on the planet, gastronomic objects unparalleled in their unadorned elegance. Seconds later, they’ll be gone.Be prepared to make your reservations at least a month in advance, though, and expect a bill starting at $365; also, don’t hope for much in the way of ambience. Sukiyabashi Jiro holds only 10 seats, doesn’t offer appetizers, and is a bare-bones experience that’s purely about the fish. A food critic named Yamamoto admits he’s nervous every time he eats there, whether from the pressure of living up to the food or simply from being in the presence of God.“Jiro Dreams of Sushi” is a foodie’s delight, obviously, and best seen either on a full stomach or with restaurant reservations immediately following.

Gelb films the preparation of the nigiri with appropriate reverence: soaring strings on the soundtrack as knives glide through the red, glistening chunks of tuna in slo-mo close-up. But the film says as much about the human price one pays for perfection — or the pursuit thereof — and it’s not in dollars or yen.At 85, Ono is the acknowledged master of his art. Michelin gave Sukiyabashi Jiro a rare three-star rating, meaning that it’s “worth traveling to the country just to eat there.” Superstar chef Anthony Bourdain has bowed down and declared his unworthiness, and the Japanese government has named Jiro a living national treasure. In person, he’s smiling but ascetic, a lean, weathered artisan whose devotion to his craft is complete. Gelb’s camera follows him to the Tsukiji fish market, where we get a hint of what makes Ono’s sushi stand out from the pack (he has special arrangements with vendors whose standards are as exacting as his). Would you be willing to massage an octopus for 45 minutes, until its flesh possesses just the right amount of chewability?

“It always has to taste better than last time,” he says.jiro dreams of sushi cathayIt’s not that Ono’s past is unimportant; sushi rolling mat safewayhe just doesn’t have much of one. jiro dreams of sushi 720p mkvHaving left home at 9 — and being told by his parents not to come back — he became a sushi apprentice at a time when the food was still sold in the streets of Tokyo, well before it achieved global fame with the introduction of the California roll in the 1980s. We see old photos of Jiro in his youth, but they convey little. More compellingly complicated is the master’s relationship with his two sons. The elder, Yoshikazu, is still his father’s apprentice at 50, and he wonders if he’ll ever be his own man.

(”Jiro’s ghost will always be there watching,” he says with resignation at one point.)A younger son, Takashi, is charged with the lesser task of managing a second restaurant, in Roppongi Hills, identical to the mother ship in every respect other than that everything’s reversed (the father’s a lefty, the son a righty). Both sons wanted to go to college, but Ono wouldn’t let them, and Yoshikazu says he hated making sushi at first. “I wasn’t much of a father,” Jiro admits.But what’s attentive parenthood when the universe is calling through the daily ritual of striving for the ineffable? The film’s title isn’t kidding -- Jiro really does dream of sushi — and his approach to life is the same as his approach to food: Do the same thing every day, only simpler and better. That means the same train to work, the same seat on that train, the same lean slice of akami placed just so on the same shaped ball of rice. “I don’t think I have achieved perfection,” Jiro says, “but I feel ecstatic every day.”

Follow him on Twitter @tyburr. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a 2011 American documentary film directed by David Gelb.[2] The film follows Jiro Ono (小野 二郎 Ono Jirō?), an 85-year-old sushi master and owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a Michelin three-star restaurant, on his continuing quest to perfect the art of sushi. Sukiyabashi Jiro is a 10-seat, sushi-only restaurant located in a Tokyo subway station. Jiro Ono serves a tasting menu of roughly 20 courses, for a total of 30,000 Japanese yen ($281 USD). The film also profiles Jiro's two sons, both of whom are also sushi chefs. The younger son, Takashi (隆士), left Sukiyabashi Jiro to open a mirror image of his father's restaurant in Roppongi Hills. The 50-year-old elder son, Yoshikazu (禎一), obliged to succeed his father, still works for Jiro and is faced with the prospect of one day taking over the flagship restaurant. Initially, Gelb had planned to do what he had nicknamed "Planet Sushi", inspired by the cinematography of the BBC documentary Planet Earth:[5]

Originally, I was going to make a film with a lot of different sushi chefs who all had different styles, but when I got to Jiro's restaurant, I was not only amazed by how good the sushi was and how much greater it was than any other sushi restaurant I had ever been to, but I also found Jiro to be such a compelling character and such an interesting person. I was also fascinated by the story of his son, who is fifty years old, but still works for his father at the restaurant. So, I thought, "Here's a story about a person living in his father's shadow while his father is in a relentless pursuit of perfection." It was the makings of a good feature film. Food critic Masuhiro Yamamoto connected Gelb with Jiro.[6] Principal photography took Gelb one month (January 2010), augmented by additional scenes shot later that year in August; editing took 10 months. Jiro Dreams of Sushi debuted in the US in 2011 at the Provincetown International Film Festival[1] and was an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival[7] in the same year.

The documentary was made available on Netflix streaming on August 28, 2012. As of 2013, the film has grossed $2,552,478 in North America. It is ranked 70th of all US Documentaries on Box Office Mojo. The film received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. The film earned a rating of 99% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 88 reviews and an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Beautiful, thoughtful, and engrossing, Jiro Dreams of Sushi should prove satisfying even for filmgoers who don't care for the cuisine."[8] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 77 out of 100, based on 27 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Roger Ebert called it a "portrait of tunnel vision" and concluded:[10] While watching it, I found myself drawn into the mystery of this man. Are there any unrealized wishes in his life? If you find an occupation you love and spend your entire life working at it, is that enough? Standing behind his counter, Jiro notices things.

Some customers are left-handed, some right-handed. That helps determine where they are seated at his counter. As he serves a perfect piece of sushi, he observes it being eaten. He knows the history of that piece of seafood. He knows his staff has recently started massaging an octopus for 45 minutes and not half an hour, for example. Does he search a customer's eyes for a signal that this change has been an improvement? Half an hour of massage was good enough to win three Michelin stars. You realize the tragedy of Jiro Ono's life is that there are not, and will never be, four stars. Gelb, a "huge Philip Glass fan", has commented on his use of Philip Glass compositions in the film's soundtrack:[11] In hindsight, I think it works because Philip Glass's music is kind of a metaphor for Jiro's work ethic, because it's repetitive but it also builds on itself and escalates, and it's the same with Jiro's work. Because every day he's going, he's doing the same routine, and trying to do everything exactly the same, but just reaching for that one step of improvement, and I feel like the music's doing the same thing, so they match perfectly.