Up pulls a black sedan and a sharply dressed man in slacks and a sweater steps from the vehicle as the trunk is popped. Inside, two medium-size boxes are revealed. The man turns to face Aria’s food delivery docks, which are thick with action. Two men in chef’s whites, Kyoung Jang and Bonifacio Dela Cruz, stand out among a sea of dockworkers dressed in black uniforms. They dodge forklifts moving pallets and shipping containers, and walk down the ramp toward the man. Dock manager Dave Belmonte follows.

Jang and Dela Cruz lift the boxes from the trunk. A box cutter slices through the tops, and five fish—fluke, sea bream, fatty deep-sea snapper, young yellowtail and amberjack—get a once over and nods of approval from both chefs. Belmonte signals that the man has delivered what was ordered. Shipping receipts are signed, then the man slides back into his sedan and is gone.

This interaction defines Bar Masa, one of Las Vegas’ most acclaimed Japanese restaurants, located inside Aria Resort & Casino. Proprietor and Michelin three-star chef Masa Takayama’s high standards call for smaller shipments, which ensure product freshness. There are never huge delivery trucks with built-in freezers or dozens of frozen fish packed into crates. Instead, each fish is carefully handpicked, packaged and shipped by Chef Masa’s personal buyer in Japan. Every one or two days, a few boxes leave Japan with product from fish markets in cities such as Kyushu, Kumamoto and Nagasaki and arrive in Las Vegas, to be served that night or the next.

The two boxes are carried up the ramp and into the dock’s receiving area for further inspection. Each box is weighed and Jang and Dela Cruz remove one fish at a time. Plastic wrap and Japanese newspaper is pulled from the tightly wrapped fish. A thermometer is inserted into the gill of each fish; the temperature needs to be below 40 degrees Fahrenheit to pass inspection. This entire delivery gets the thumbs up. With a sign off from Belmonte, the two boxes are loaded onto a motorized cart, and the chefs drive the fish through the labyrinth of hallways leading from the docks to an elevator that lets off at Aria’s casino floor and into Bar Masa’s kitchen.

Takayama was just 8 years old when he began delivering sashimi to neighbors in wooden baskets from his family’s small fish market. After high school, Masa moved to Tokyo, apprenticing for eight years at Sushiko, a century-old restaurant in the Ginza district. He arrived in the U.S. in the late ’70s and opened his first restaurant, Saba, in 1981 in downtown L.A. In 2004, Masa christened his eponymous restaurant on the fourth floor of New York City’s Time Warner building. The New York Times named Masa the “best sushi restaurant in New York City.” Eventually, Michelin came calling with its highest rating, three stars; it was the first Japanese restaurant in the U.S. to receive the honor. Today, Masa has his trusted chefs carrying out the blissful dining experience at Bar Masa. Visually and physically, every box is checked off. It looks good. It tastes good. The dishes coming from the kitchen are a succession of culinary delights.

In the kitchen, the day’s delivery is immediately cleaned and prepped. At a long metal table with three built-in counter spaces and sinks adjacent to each counter, chef Andrew Kamrai joins Jang and Dela Cruz. It’s go time. Movements are swift and precise, a beautiful orchestration of scaling and slicing the skin off the fish using gyuto knives. To butcher the fish, each chef uses the deba knife—bellies are opened, parts not for consumption are removed, and tail and head are chopped off. Each chef wields his knife like a sword, slicing side to side, in and out until the fish is prepped.

For the final steps, the chefs scrub and wash the fish using their hands until they are perfectly clean. Within a half hour, the process is complete; all five pieces are wrapped, tagged and signed off on by the chef who prepped the individual fish. It’s then put into the walk-in refrigerator.

When Chef Masa arrives at the restaurant for his monthly visit, he slips into his chef’s whites and gets to work. The sushi master seamlessly blends into the scene of a kitchen buzzing with action, but all eyes are on him. On this day he’ll start crafting three trademark dishes: masa toro tartare caviar, tai truffle and kanpachi jalapeño with potato julienne.

Chef Masa steps up to the wooden counter and prepares to perform what could be described as an intimate and deeply concentrated dance between his knives and the fish. In Japanese cuisine, a chef’s knives are considered sacred. No chef touches or uses another chef’s knives. Masa explains the philosophy: “A samurai has (his) own sword. They’re not going to borrow another samurai’s sword, right? The chef’s spirit is in the knives.”

With a sturdy and confident hand, he slices sea bream and amberjack tissue-paper-thin, assembling the fish with pink salt, freshly shaved ginger, sliced jalapeños, caviar and truffles. Chef Masa is flanked by two of his chefs, who quietly hand him the next ingredient or a plate. Although barely any words exchanged, the chefs can easily anticipate his next move. Chef Masa demands silence when he’s in the kitchen, the air punctuated not by voices but instead by the sounds of knives chopping and chopsticks clicking.

This small whirlwind takes only a few minutes. All three dishes are plated and ready for presentation. It’s then that Chef Masa finds the most pleasure. “What I like the most, it’s the customer’s enjoyment; that’s the most important thing,” he says. “Over the counter, I watch the people appreciate the food. I see them enjoying it. That’s my most favorite part of doing this.”

Chef Masa will spend the rest of the day in the kitchen, trying out a number new recipes that he envisioned on the flight from New York. In the evening, he’ll be cooking for VIPs. Tomorrow, Jang and Dela Cruz will head back to the loading docks and wait for the next delivery from the man in the black sedan.