Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb, 2011): USA

Reviewed by Linda Lopez.  Viewed at SBIFF. Lobero Theater.

It you are a sushi lover, you must see “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.”  If you’re not, I guarantee if you watch this film it will inspire you to do the best you can in whatever you do.

“Jiro Dreams of Sushi” is a documentary about 85-year old Jiro Ono, who is the master sushi chef in Japan and owner of a world-renown sushi restaurant located in a basement in the Ginza area of Tokyo.  His restaurant is listed in Michelin’s Guide with three stars.

If you want to have a meal at Jiro’s sushi shrine, you need to make reservations at least two months in advance, and it will cost you 30,000 Yens (approximately $300 per person).

Jiro prepares twenty sushi meals per day (ten for lunch and ten for dinner).  Each meal comprises of twenty sushi servings (meaning twenty delectable mouthfuls per person).  His son Yoshikazu goes to the fish market every day to buy only the best fish, and he pays top prices because his father Jiro only uses the best.

Yoshikazu is also in line to replace Jiro when his father retires.  Jiro’s other son, Sukiyabashi, has his own very successful sushi restaurant.  According to the film, many sushi connoisseurs prefer Sukiyabashi over Jiro because the son has a more relaxed atmosphere as opposed to the father’s restaurant. When you go to Jiro’s restaurant, the sushi guru stands across each of his clients on the other side of the bar serving each sushi morsel likened to a symphony conductor.  Jiro also scrutinizes every reaction to each serving of sushi.  This can be intimidating to some customers, but alas, the serious sushi connoisseur is only interested in satisfying their appetite.

Meanwhile, Yoshikazu is working under his father’s shadow but supervises the other young sous chefs, who painstakingly filet and slice fish in miniscule slivers, and massage octopuses for 45 minutes to make them tender.  They also spend hours perfecting every sushi ingredient, which requires focussed attention and patience to every minute task.

Since Jiro is 85 years old, he is grooming his son to take over his business.   It takes ten years of apprenticeship to become a bon a fide sushi chef, and his son Yoshikazu can certainly stand out on his own in the art of making sushi.  Surprisingly, Yoshikazu divulged that Michelin tasted his sushi and not that of his father’s.

There is film footage covering Jiro’s younger life which gives the audience a glimpse of what shaped him to be the perfectionist as he is.  He only shared one photograph of his father and himself when Jiro was a small child.  His father made a living by taking people out for boat rides.  Although he was successful for a short while, he soon started to have drinking problems and abandoned his family.  By the time Jiro was nine years old he was on his own.  Later, he was in the Japanese military during World War II.

Although Jiro has scars from his early life, he was able to grow from his early experiences.  He also realized that he had the ability to determine his own destiny.  For Jiro, mastering a skill, and then perfecting it, provided the impetus to make perfect sushi.  In one scene in the film, Jiro ties on his freshly starched and ironed apron, as if he’s getting ready for a match in martial arts, which immortalizes Jiro’s gusto in attaining perfection.

After the film presentation, Director David Gelb shared with the audience that musical scores from Tchikovsky and Mozart were chosen for the background music because they emulate the scale heights that correlate to Jiro’s strive for perfection.  On that note, Gelb said that in the editing process of making this documentary, they were following Jiro’s philosophy:  Follow your passion and do everything as perfect as you can.