Some six years ago, German tennis great Boris Becker had the most expensive meal of his life. After hitting the Nobu in London, “where the rich and famished like to eat,” the randy retired racquet player enjoyed a post-sushi quickie in one of the restaurant’s closets. A widely reported tryst, it’s been referred to variously as the “linen closet” and the “broom closet” incident. Who knows? Maybe it’s both.

The reason for the infamous story is that the woman at the centre of the tryst – she was Russian and naturally, a model – was Nobu knocked-up. She consequently had a “love child,” leading to a £2-million paternity suit and a very costly divorce for Becker. The tale got weirder when Becker claimed that the Russian Mafia had planted the woman in the closet at Nobu to steal his sperm and blackmail him. He brought in lawyers and even his own private dicks to investigate the story, and who later went so far as to snatch diapers out of mommy’s garbage bins in order to conduct their own DNA testing.

All this for the eatery’s world-famous black cod with miso? In one respect, it’s one of the myriad ways that Nobu, and its avant-garde Japanese cuisine, has become mythologized in haute-eat circles. Run jointly by sushi czar Nobu Matsuhisa and a certain Robert De Niro, the restaurant is more like a Disneyland for adults. The excitement that creases the faces of fancy nibblers at any given Nobu – the first one in TriBeCa has led to many more across the globe – is not far-off from the euphoria felt by kids upon spotting the spires of Disney’s Cinderella Castle.

In a world where there’s lots of talk about global cuisine, Nobu stands alone, arguably as the first post-modern, cross-border, everybody-who’s-anybody munch spot for people with fine palates and fat wallets. Those who set on jets and others who just want to be part of the finely honed glamour come to perform their rites at, say, Nobu Malibu or Nobu Miami Beach.

When I was recently at the London location – it sits like a jewel inside the Metropolitan overlooking Hyde Park – I asked for a table near the closet and promptly ordered the yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno (my personal fave). Then, I thought wistfully about Julia Roberts in Notting Hill. This is, after all, where she dines with Hugh Grant and where she pronounces to a nearby table of men, “the tuna is particularly good.”

With its spare, soothing and high-Ikea universal décor, and its delicious, if not unintelligible menu, Nobu is not just a cove for film stars who charge $20 million to smile. Everybody goes there. Ladies who lunch. Their loafer-shod “walkers,” too. Powerbrokers as cold-blooded as the fish on their plates. Rock stars. Fashion folk. Even some real “folk” folk.

The mythology of the place even found its way into that eternally myth-churning Sex and the City. When Miranda, who’s just become a mom, tells Carrie, “Today’s the baby nurse’s last day. From now on you’ll have to book me a year in advance,” Carrie gamely shoots back, “Wow, you’re like Nobu.”

There are so many celebs who like to nosh at Nobu that some years ago the New York Post printed a famous-person floor plan. Madonna dug table 30 in the back. Fran Drescher got table 7 near the entrance. The late Princess Diana, too, was a fan. Al Gore, according to England’s The Observer, came into the New York restaurant, preceded by bomb-sniffing dogs and lots of Secret Service agents who shut off the entire street. “All that,” general manager and part-owner Richie Notar said, “just for sashimi salad.”

Not all Nobus are created equal. Although probably 85 percent of the menu is said to be the same at the various branches, there are subtle differences. At the Dallas Nobu, which just opened this year (there hadn’t been so much excitement since J.R. got shot), it was reported that the cowtown Nobu would be offering a wider selection of Kobe beef than the other locations.

More recently, the big buzz has been about the new baby Nobu in Manhattan – Nobu 57, located uptown on 57th Street near Fifth Avenue – and London’s newest edition, the Nobu Berkeley. The social anxiety and strategizing is definitely on! The funniest thing is this: about a hundred yards away from the new, gorgeous Nobu – in the very same building – is a Benihana, the Olive Garden of Japanese eats! It’s like finding a black velvet painting next to a Rothko.

Although, I do wonder what Benihana’s closets are like. —

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Shinan Govani is the Scene columnist for the National Post and frequently appears on television commenting on celebrities and the social whirl. Write him at sgovani@enroutemag.net.