The Fish God of New York

If money were no object, I would eat sushi three times a day until a fish parasite or sheer saturated joy killed me—and I would die completely at peace. Fresh raw salmon and rice at exactly the right temperature, a soy sauce that’s thick and not too sweet. Tuna, egg, squid. I’ve never been able to articulate what sushi does to me that other food can’t, except that it tastes like something the ocean made specifically for me and I’m just grateful to be in the room for it.

Which makes Nozomu Abe a natural object of reverence. He runs Sushi Noz in New York, and what he’s built there is not merely a Japanese restaurant operating abroad—it’s a proof of concept that the distance between Manhattan and Tokyo can be collapsed entirely through skill and attention. He works the freshest fish in the city with a clarity that reads as almost meditative. For people who take this food seriously, Nozomu isn’t exactly a chef. He’s closer to a priest. Or, as some describe him, a god.

Highsnobiety’s short documentary follows him through the process—how he selects and handles fish, how he turns something that sounds deceptively simple into a discipline that takes decades to approach correctly. There’s something deeply calming about watching someone at the absolute top of their practice. It reminds you that precision and patience still matter somewhere, in some kitchen, in some city. I watched it twice and spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about salmon.