Nobu Matsuhisa

I'm a lucky person because the company keeps growing, and that means my team keeps growing.

Los Angeles is my home - I have my wife and two daughters growing up there.

I have a restaurant in Milan, and Paper Moon is five minutes away from my hotel, so I always go there for lunch. It's a casual place that serves good salad, pizza and pasta; the space is tight with tables close together, and it feels buzzy. Food comes out fast, too.

I learned from my first restaurant: Make customers happy, make sure the customer comes back again. And automatically, success has followed me.

When I was 11 or 12 - a young boy in Japan - one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there's a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.

Every year, I do a New Year's day party at my home. I invite my staff and my friends and their kids. Around 40-50 people come by, and I do a barbecue and salads, steak and sushi, and also lots of cheese.

A different spice is the most interesting thing to me.

Cooking and film are completely different - but I'd rather stay in the kitchen than be in movies.

Of course the Japanese and Peruvian fish are different, but it's the same Pacific Ocean. They are different, but I know fish.

Every morning when I woke up, my mother was already in the kitchen making breakfast. It was always the same: steamed rice, pickled vegetables, grilled fish and miso soup. Each day there was something different in the soup such as tofu or potatoes.

You know how kids dream of being soccer players or actors? Well, my dream was to be a sushi chef.

In the morning and the end of every day, I thank that I'm alive.