Is it possible to love a piece of dead fish more than you love people? That?s the question asked, implicitly if not directly, by David Gelb?s documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a portrait of 85-year-old sushi master Jiro Ono that is itself as meticulous and carefully formed as a piece of nigirizushi. The movie?s title comes from an interview with Jiro, who speaks of waking up in the middle of the night with new ideas for perfecting and enhancing his craft. Then we see him standing stiffly behind the bar at his Tokyo restaurant, waiting with an air of placid annoyance for a customer to consume one of his precise and studied creations: With his hands, he has made a dream you can eat. And he wants you to know it.
Gelb?s documentary is tactile in the same way. In fact, it?s so strictly visual ? as opposed to sensual ? that unlike most well-made movies about food, it may not send you walking out hungry. A food-critic friend and I were discussing this phenomenon: It could be, as my friend posited, that sushi, though among the most beautiful of all consumables, is just ?not very food porny.? And it?s true: I left Jiro Dreams of Sushi wanting not to eat, but to make jewelry, preferably with the most colorful, carefully polished beads or stones available.
Jiro, as he himself tells us in the film, has been mastering the art of making sushi nearly his whole life. For years he has run Sukiyashi Jiro, a 10-seat sushi restaurant in Tokyo, and though the place is just a modest ? if elegant ? dinerlike strip, it was the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded three Michelin stars. His eldest son, Yoshikazu, works in the restaurant with…
Desiree Dymond Diane Kruger Dido Diora Baird Dita Von Teese Dominique Swain Donna Feldman Drea de Matteo
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