Nobu Matsuhisa may not know the term 'ohana, but he certainly understands the concept.

His staff, he says, is his second family (he has a wife, Yoko, and two daughters).

Nobu, as he's known worldwide, owns Nobu Waikiki at the Waikiki Parc Hotel and 21 other Nobu restaurants plus three Matsuhisa restaurants and Ubon in London. He's here to cater the official Sony Open dinner tomorrow and to serve a rare omakase (chef's choice) dinner Friday at Nobu Waikiki. He also played in the Sony Dream Cup Monday.

More than any other chef, Nobu introduced America to the concept of Asian fusion, pairing yellowtail tuna with jalapenos, putting sashimi in a salad, making a sake and mint mojito with uni (sea urchin).

But beyond his place in the ranks of stellar international chefs, he says, he also considers himself "father" to his far-flung staff. "I am Nobu father and I have lots of kids, my staff like my sons, my daughters," he said, speaking articulately but still, after 20 years in this country, with the accent of his native Japan.

Nobu, who turns 60 this month, routinely promotes from within; his key chefs and managers train with him at key outlets — Nobu London, Nobu New York or Nobu Tokyo.

He has written books with three of his executive chefs and hopes that they will take the lessons learned from these experiences and write their own books. The latest is "Nobu Miami, The Party Cookbook" (Kodansha International, hardback, $39.95), with Nobu Miami's Thomas Buckley, a sumptuously photographed coffee table-sized volume of recipes influenced by Miami, South America and the Caribbean plus a chapter of Nobu classics.

Buckley, here to help with tomorrow's 1,000-guest Sonny dinner, has worked with Nobu for 10 years. He said doing this book was an adventure: They settled on a number of recipes for each chapter; he developed 80 or 90 ideas and, the day before the two-week photo shoot, Nobu arrived and axed about 50 or 60 of them. Instead, he urged Buckley to go to the local fish and produce markets and cook up new choices.

"And that embodies the Nobu spirit and philosophy: Fresh food, done simply with great flavors so I'd say a large amount of this book was very fresh," said Buckley with a laugh.

(Nobu Waikiki is closed tomorrow for Sony dinner prep, but Nobu says rumors that the restaurant will close permanently are false, even if business has slowed.)

Each New Year's Day, a time when Japanese traditionally celebrate with family, Nobu invites his staff to his Los Angeles home, where he sets up a sushi bar and serves them. It is practically the only time, he says, that he has a chance to cook at home.

He travels 10 months of the year so he can see his "children" face to face, conduct training sessions, check their performance and see who is in line to rise. "Mostly, it is communication. It is very important," he said.

And not just communication with the staff. Integral to Nobu's rise has been his rapport with his customers; Robert De Niro, the late Giorgio Armani, Kenny G and others who have been among his business associates were first his customers. "They like to see me, talk to me, I go to the tables," said Nobu.

Nobu says he pioneered the concept of omakase in the U.S. — and the key to omakase is not just sushi skill, it's people reading. In the days when he was behind the sushi bar at Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills, his first restaurant, "I ask people what do you want, is there anything you don't like? They say, 'you choose' (which is essentially what omakase means)," he recalled.

Then, as he worked, he watched: He watched to see who was ready for another course, who was enjoying what they were eating, who seemed to need some help or instruction.

In a way, those were the days for him: "I love cooking. Cooking is my life."

And while he generally hosts a hands-on omakase dinner when he's visiting a restaurant, the rest of the time, he's a businessman, perpetually on an airplane and on the cell phone. He arrived in Honolulu from Tokyo last Saturday and leaves this Saturday for Spain, where he will be one of 10 chefs honored at the Madrid Fusion International Gastronomical Summit. The chefs are those who are considered to have recreated the culinary world in the past quarter-century. Nobu is the only Asian in the group.

The son of a lumber merchant who was killed in a traffic accident when he was just 7, Nobu, who grew up in Saitsama, outside Tokyo, says his mother served as an example of hard work, perseverance and good home cooking.

But it was his brother who unwittingly launched Nobu's stellar career by taking him to visit his first sushi restaurant when Nobu was 11 or 12.

They walked through the door and the staff called out "Irashaimase!!!"

"To some people it sounds like screaming but it just means welcome. For me, it was lots of energies. In my generation, fish is very expensive. Normally, it's my mother cooking at home, I not going restaurant all the time. I sit at the counter ... They slice the fish and make the sushi in front of me. Then you touch the sushi, put the soy sauce, put in the mouth. It's exciting, the experience. I love it. It's easy for kids to catch a dream, lots of kids they want to be be football player, baseball player, golf player. For me, I catch a dream of sushi."

So, after completing his schooling, he went to Tokyo, got a lowly job in a sushi bar, living on the premises, washing dishes and not even touching a ball of rice for three years. After this apprenticeship, he completed formal study and got a job as a sushi chef.

Then a customer asked him to come to Lima, Peru, and start a sushi bar there.

So began a transition that has educated many palates. Undaunted by a lack of many ingredients formal sushi chefs consider essential, Nobu was open-minded enough to see the potential in the new ingredients he encountered in Peru and, later, in Argentina.

"I learn how to eat and cook in a different way. In Japan, sushi bar never use olive oil, garlic, cilantro, chili paste. It's wasabi and soy sauce, always. But I want to try," he recalled.

He tried and succeeded.

He pages through his new book and offers an example, Uni Tiradito Nobu Style. Tiradito is a Peruvian style of ceviche, in which fresh fish is marinated in citrus. Here, he and Buckley use a Japanese favorite, sea urchin, instead of fish, pair it with shaved daikon and cilantro leaves, add just a drop or two of yuzu (a Japanese citrus), skewer it and top it with a very light sweet-sour sauce based on aji rocoto (a very hot, small, red Peruvian pepper), rice vinegar, sugar and olive oil.

Anathema to a classical sushi chef, nirvana to Nobu customers. It's the kind of marriage Nobu and his chefs create daily from Tokyo to London. And, by the end of this year, in Mexico, Moscow and Capetown, South Africa, his next three restaurant projects.

The interview completed, Nobu wanders off into the kitchen and returns to sit at the burnt-ash sushi bar, eating his breakfast.

And what does an internationally known culinary genius have for breakfast? A simple, open-faced hand roll of rice wrapped in nori and topped with a sprinkling of his trademark dried miso.