Did you know Robert De Niro once helped turn a simple Japanese restaurant into a multi-million-dollar empire consisting of a restaurant chain as well as a luxury hotel chain? Nobu, which started as a mere Beverly Hills eatery, ended up turning into a global luxury lifestyle empire that redefined the art of Japanese cuisine and fine dining.The beloved actor, who is best known for his work in ‘Taxi Driver,’ ‘The Godfather Part II,’ and ‘The Intern,’ built the grand empire along with chef Nobu Matsuhisa and film producer Meir Teper after meeting him in the late 1980s at Matsuhisa’s Beverly Hills restaurant. Here’s how a single Beverly Hills restaurant turned into one of the biggest phenomena in the culinary world.
In the 1980s, Robert De Niro found chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s restaurant
In the 1980s, De Niro came across Matsuhisa’s restaurant and ended up falling in love with his food. He loved the food at his Los Angeles restaurant so much that he spent several years trying to convince him to open a location in New York.For almost four years, the chef did not like the idea and refused the actor, who became a regular at his restaurant. According to the restaurant’s official website, Nobu is well known for blending traditional Japanese technique with South American ingredients, which is something that he developed while living in Peru.While talking to Robb Report earlier this year about the chain restaurant, De Niro shared, “I was just happy getting my food brought to my apartment each day. This was in the late 1980s, when I lived on La Cienega Boulevard, right across from Matsuhisa, and one of the waiters would bring it across the street, put it in my elevator, and it’d bring it up to the 10th floor where I lived.”He further detailed how he approached the chef in the first place, sharing, “Eventually [British film director] Roland Joffé introduced me to Chef Nobu, and as soon as I’d spent half an hour with him, I said, ‘If you ever want to open a restaurant in New York, let me know,’ because I saw how special it was, and I’d never seen a Japanese restaurant like that on the East Coast. It had a sexiness to it, a pizazz. So I said, ‘This is great. This will work in New York or London.’”Finally, after a lot of waiting, the chef agreed after Robert told him that he did not wish to rush into the development of the new restaurant and that he had even found him the perfect spot to open shop in Tribeca, New York.
The launch and expansion of the Nobu brand with Robert De Niro’s help
In 1994, the flagship Nobu restaurant opened in Tribeca, which was founded as a partnership between Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro, film producer Meir Teper, and managing partner Richter Gordon. By 2013, the business had grown quite a bit, which is why the brand then ventured into the hotel business and opened its first residence as a boutique hotel-within-a-hotel inside Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip.
Where is Nobu open now?
The restaurant and hotel chain is now open in hundreds of locations across the world, including multiple locations in the USA, Canada, Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Africa, as well as Asian Pacific regions. Some of its flagship locations are now open in spaces such as Malibu, London, Tokyo, and Dubai, to name a few.
