Of every Nobu Matsuhisa restaurant in the world — and there are now a lot of them — the one on the pool terrace of the Belvedere Hotel above Mykonos Town is probably the most beautiful. The Belvedere is a low, white, 1960s Cycladic hotel on the edge of the School of Fine Arts district; Nobu takes the pool deck, turns it into a dining room between eight and midnight, and serves the menu that made Matsuhisa’s name — black cod in miso, yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño, the new-style salmon tiradito — under olive trees and a Cycladic sky that is, for about forty minutes around sunset, exactly the right shade of pink.
This is the dress-up dinner of the trip. Every bachelor and bachelorette week in Mykonos needs one: a night where the group meets in the hotel lobby in something better than a linen shirt, where the photographs are framed rather than grabbed, where dinner is the event and not the interval between two other events. Nobu does this job better than anywhere else on the island, because the building is gorgeous, the service is Tokyo-accurate, and the kitchen is consistent enough that you can order the same things you have ordered in London or New York and know exactly what you are getting.
The arithmetic is predictable and steep. A group of ten, a proper spread of cold and hot plates, a bottle or two of reasonable white, maybe some sake, plus the signature dishes that somebody will always insist on — three hundred to five hundred euros a head, all in. There is no getting around this, and trying to is a waste of the evening. The correct move is to budget for it in advance, tell the group, and turn up ready.
When to book
Book the 20:30 seating, one to two weeks out in high season. The pool terrace is the table to ask for — request it at booking and politely again at arrival. Arriving earlier than your reservation is rewarded; the bar inside the hotel is a lovely room for a first drink while the group gathers. Arrive late and you will lose the light, which is the thing you came for.
The door
The door is enforced. Closed leather shoes, proper trousers, no beach attire. Day-club energy is actively wrong here. Pack for the dinner before you leave home — assembling it on the island is harder than it looks.
The moment
The sushi boat. Somebody at the table will have ordered the premium platter for the group, the kitchen will send it out at around 21:30 with a quiet ceremony, and there is always — always — a collective pause as the boat lands and the group remembers it agreed to split. That pause is the moment. A second later somebody laughs, the chopsticks move, and the dinner goes where it was always going to go.
The move:
Add Nobu Matsuhisa to your Mykonos app.