Unauthorized

A remarkable and mind-bogging array of creative sashimi and sushi from perhaps the world’s greatest master of sashimi and sushi, Masa Takayama oversees a sushi bar that probably sits no more than ten people, with a few tiny tables to the side. Expect to pay $300 to over $500 (depending on how much toro you eat). There’s no doubt this restaurant won’t work for many people, even putting aside the high cost of it, but this is a lifetime experience, especially if you admire the purity, simplicity, and precision of a great Japanese master working with the freshest possible fish. You watch him dissect it and serve it to you in its unadorned, most virginal state. I will go to Masa at least once or twice a year as long as I live, and as long as he continues to stand behind his sushi bar, doing what he does. It is an experience worth every cent, and I would have even paid twice as much to enjoy it. It is simply extraordinary. I have eaten in the finest restaurants in Tokyo, including the only three-star Michelin sushi bar in Tokyo. (Masa has three stars from the Michelin Guide for New York as well). Masa is in a class by himself, offering a transcendent experience. But if you’re not into raw fish and sushi, it’s a waste of your time.

We brought our own wines, paid a reasonable corkage, and worked through a magnificent white, perhaps one of the greatest Chardonnay-based wines I have ever tasted in the world, the 2005 Reuling Vineyard from Aubert. This is a wine more Montrachet-like than most Montrachets. It is pure liquid minerals and citrus with some hints of mandarin orange and honeysuckle – an extraordinary effort for Chardonnay. If it doesn’t last as long as a great Montrachet, it certainly will be as profound as any Montrachet anyone could ever taste over its first 7-8 years of life.

There are so many myths regarding food pairings with wine, and on the surface, one would think that some of the most powerful, concentrated, heady wines from Châteauneuf du Pape would not be a good match with an assortment of remarkable fish, sea urchin, Osetra caviar, and. probably my favorite food in the world, toro. Nevertheless, they worked fabulously well, and it shows that if you live within too strict parameters, you’ll never experience the majesty of sashimi with great Châteauneuf du Pape! We had four from the irregular 2003 vintage, but all four are titans, current-day and future legends of the southern Rhône. All of them performed magnificently, with three bordering on perfection, and the Clos des Papes a great example from that estate, only eclipsed by what they did in 1990 and 2007. The 2003 Clos des Papes is pure raspberries and kirsch liqueur with hints of roasted Provençal herbs, licorice, and spice box. It is full-bodied and fleshy, but the texture is more Burgundian than the Châteauneuf du Papes that followed. It is a big wine, but gloriously pure and rich, with everything in balance. It should drink nicely for at least another decade. The 2003 Pierre Usseglio Cuvée de Mon Aïeul has always been my favorite Mon Aïeul, and it remains to be seen whether the 2007 will eclipse it. This glorious wine offers up notes of licorice, nori (one of the reasons I brought it to the restaurant), pepper, and enormous quantities of blueberry and blackberry liqueur. Unctuously textured, full-bodied, but sensational with the assortment of fish, this wine is so silky and sumptuous as to be almost unreal. It should drink nicely for another decade as well.

A wine that gets better and better every time I have it from bottle, and their first great vintage in what is now a succession of impressive efforts, is  Isabel Ferrando’s 2003 Domaine de St.-Préfért Châteauneuf du Pape Collection Charles Giraud. This is even richer than the Mon Aïeul and Clos des Papes, offering up a classic concoction of roasted Provençal herbs, melted licorice, blackberry, sweet kirsch, truffle, and smoked meats. The wine is decadently rich, full-bodied, but pristinely pure and impeccably well-balanced, in spite of its large and substantial mouthfeel and size. Lastly, and the biggest wine of all, is the 2003 Clos St.-Jean Deus Ex Machina, a virtual smorgasbord of aromas, including Provençal herbs, ground pepper, incense, camphor, blackberry, plum, fig, and blueberry. This incredible wine coats the palate with glycerin and fruit, is full-bodied, but again, a magnificent match with Masa’s sashimi. In fact, we had Masa taste the wines as well. I remember when I first met him, drinking a horizontal of 1990 Bordeaux when he was based in Los Angeles, he too realized that there is a lot more to food and wine match-ups than what we are so frequently told.

Masa also does an amazing dish taking foie gras and having you cook it in your own little bowl of boiling liquid. He also does this with toro, then the boiling liquid is converted into one of the tastiest broths anyone could ever hope to devour. Genius is rare, but Masa Takayama is irrefutably a genius who Americans should be thrilled to have in New York City.