I’m from Birmingham. I’m not afraid of things. Things are afraid of me.

A Broadway theater filled with nothing but critics.

Losing one of my children, as there is no greater loss.

Falling onstage…or anywhere.

My training took seven years. I didn’t learn how to make sushi for the first three years. I only got two days off a month, and slept on the restaurant floor. But I loved the job. I’d go to the fish market every morning. I got to open the restaurant and see the customers. I’d watch my mentor making sushi and would copy him under the table, practising with my fingers.

My father died in a car accident when I was seven. Whenever I missed him, I would look in the family photo album at this picture of when he had gone to Palau.

I moved to Argentina, then back to Tokyo and then to Anchorage, in Alaska, where I ran a restaurant. After 50 days the restaurant burnt down – an electrical fire. I lost my dream. I lost my money. I lost my passion. I thought about suicide, but thinking of my family and my kids made me realise I had to wake up.

I started with very traditional style sushi and Japanese food, but then I went to Peru when I was young (around 23-24), and that’s where I got my Peruvian influences and ingredients. So when I opened my first restaurant in 1987, it was unique because in Los Angeles [at the time] the Japanese restaurants were very traditional.