Google Street View is able to show what the world looks like 100 years from now. What do you look at? 5 things I learned from giving a disastrous TEDx talk on artificial intelligence What advice would you give to someone twice your age? If you had to make a deal with the devil, what would you ask for that would make it worth it? Name one “War against...” you think this world needs? Hong Kong’s art fair Garden of the Artisans celebrates beauty in the everyday A doomsday warning that Hong Kong should heed: let’s eradicate climate change now, not later First Brexit, and now US President Trump Calligraphy might look pretty, but it’s harder than it looks Top 10: Clinton and Trump throw down them fightin’ wordsDavid Gelb went halfway around the globe to make his first feature, a documentary about master chef Jiro Ono, whose 10-seat Tokyo restaurant boasts three Michelin stars. But in a way, “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” which opened in Washington on Friday, is a homecoming.

“My parents took me to Japan for the first time when I was 2 years old,” Gelb said by phone from Los Angeles. That was in 1985, when the filmmaker’s father, Peter Gelb, was assistant manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Its music director at the time was Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, and the orchestra performed in Japan frequently. “I would come along with my mom, as well,” the filmmaker said. sushi grade fish lancaster pa“So I started eating cucumber rolls when I was 2 years old.” juego sushi cat 2 the great purradeSukiyabashi Jiro, which has a tiny space in the basement of a Ginza office building, does not serve cucumber or any other kind of roll (“maki” in Japanese). jogo sushi cat honeymoon

“Real sushi chefs don’t even see that as sushi,” Gelb said. “It’s a whole different category of food.” The restaurant charges about $300 for 20 pieces of nigiri, which balance toppings (usually but not always raw fish) on hand-shaped lumps of delicately flavored rice. Each of the 20 pieces in a course is different. “It’s just an incredibly satisfying and thrilling sensation to eat a perfectly balanced piece of sushi,” said Gelb, who admitted to a squalid past in which he regularly ate low-grade sushi. sushi grade fish broward county“After working on this film, I began to realize that the true art of sushi lies in these high-end restaurants. azuma sushi menu victoria bcSo now I go maybe once a month, but I pay five times as much.” mori sushi menu cairo

Like many high-end Japanese businesses, Sukiyabashi Jiro didn’t encourage non-Japanese patrons. “Originally, Jiro didn’t really like foreign customers that much,” Gelb said, “because they didn’t know that much about sushi.” Since Michelin published its first guide to Tokyo eateries in 2008, however, Ono now “loves to show foreigners the potential of sushi,” Gelb said. “If people are willing to come to the restaurant and try sushi his way, he’s always glad to have them.” Sushi made Ono’s way is the essential subject of Gelb’s documentary, which was filmed mostly in Sukiyabashi Jiro. (There are side trips to a spinoff location and to Tokyo’s massive Tsukiji fish market, as well as to a reunion of Ono’s childhood friends.) Ono and his apprentices, who include middle-aged sons Yoshikazu and Takashi, demonstrate everything from making egg custard to massaging octopus flesh to make it tender. Originally, Gelb planned “a movie about sushi, in all of its different forms.”

Then he was introduced to Ono by a Tokyo food critic, Masuhiro Yamamoto. “Everything that I wanted to convey about sushi could easily be presented from Jiro’s perspective,” the director said. The film became more personal when it came to focus on Ono, who was 85 when the movie was shot in 2010, and older son Yoshikazu, who will someday inherit the business. “It’s a human story, set in the world of sushi,” Gelb said. The director never filmed when the restaurant was in operation, although he does include one scene in which Jiro prepares a meal for invited guests. Rather than emphasize the bustle of the restaurant business, Gelb highlights Ono’s craftsmanship. The depiction of the chef’s work and outlook is surprisingly intimate, especially since it was accomplished through translators. (Gelb described his Japanese as “poor.”) Gelb prepared the translators with the topics and questions to be covered and did pre-interviews with Ono and his staff. “The first few days of the production, I didn’t even bring the camera with me,” Gelb said.

“This was just so they could get used to me being around.” The filmmaker also enlisted Yamamoto to ask some of the questions. “I knew that their rapport, and their history together, would bring out more candid answers from Jiro,” Gelb said. “If we missed something,” Gelb added, “we would shoot another interview, until we got it right. That’s something we kind of picked up from Jiro. Keep doing it over and over again until it’s right.” The director owes more than a taste for sushi to his father, now the general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The elder Gelb, who has produced numerous TV shows and documentaries about classical music and musicians, indirectly introduced his son to filmmaking. And, of course, to classical music. But the use of compositions by Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Philip Glass in “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” is not simply a matter of personal taste. “It was all about elevating the elements of the movie to [Ono’s] level as much as possible,” Gelb said.