2023-05-29 17:27:55
The press was warned: today, we will not talk about cinema. No, it’s not the Oscar-winning actor from “The Godfather” and “Raging Bull”, nor the fetish face of Martin Scorsese who is in Marrakech on this mild spring weekend. This is the other Robert de Niro, the shrewd businessman, who came to inaugurate the 17th hotel in the Nobu chain in the ocher city. A global luxury restaurant and hotel empire he founded with famed Japanese chef Nobuyuki “Nobu” Matsuhisa.
According to the consecrated expression, the two men are friends of thirty years. They met in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, at the table of Matsuhisa, chef Nobu’s only restaurant at the time. “It was my friend, director Roland Joffé, with whom I had filmed “Mission” a few years earlier, who introduced me to the address, explains Robert de Niro, who receives guests in one of the Nobu suites. Marrakesh. It didn’t look like the Japanese restaurants I knew in New York, or in London for example. What I had eaten there was fine, but traditional, classic. He had something different, special. »
If one day you want to open a restaurant in New York, let me know!
robert de niro
That special something Nobu created in Lima in 1973, where he flew away at age 24 to run his first sushi restaurant, funded by a wealthy expat compatriot. The experience is inconclusive for the young chef who is a little bored, but has to adapt the recipes of his native archipelago to ingredients from Peru. The “Nobu style” was born, and its jalapeño sashimi is still on the menu of its restaurants.
Robert de Niro instead fell in love with Black Cod Miso, the chef’s specialty. A “charcoal” cod marinated in a sauce of sake, yuzu juice and miso, which the actor would like to see immediately arrive in his beloved neighborhood of TriBeCa, New York. “If one day you want to open a restaurant in New York, tell me! he says, as the chef walks around the room. “I had just opened my restaurant, the TriBeCa Grill, and I felt, let’s say, legitimate to offer him something like this right away,” De Niro recalls.
Nobuyuki “Nobu” Matsuhisa during the inauguration of Nobu Marrakech.
Getty Images for Nobu Marrakesh
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© David M. Benett
Nobu always keeps a smile, even to reminisce about his ‘worst moment’
Nobu, however, will decline the offer. “I wasn’t ready to leave my restaurant in Beverly Hills alone,” confides the chef, a dashing septuagenarian who rarely departs from his warm smile, even when it comes to evoking “the worst moment” of career: “Before Los Angeles, I opened a restaurant in Anchorage, Alaska. I worked 50 days straight, before I allowed myself to celebrate and take some rest for Thanksgiving. And then I got a phone call: a short circuit had started a fire. The restaurant was reduced to ashes. »
Nobu, who thinks for a time to give up the knives, finally bounces back in the City of Angels as a simple cook. It will take him ten years to see his name on the facade of a restaurant. “When Bob asked me to come to New York, I appreciated the compliment, he had liked my food, but I didn’t want to make the same mistake and walk away from my restaurant again, being anxious while preparing another restaurant on the other side of the country. So I said ‘thank you, but it’s too early for me,’” says Nobu, before turning laughingly to his old pal: “But he kept coming: ‘Hello’, ‘Hi’… and I continued to feed him! »
Hotels offered us to put a Nobu in their home. Why not make a hotel ourselves?
Nobuyuki Matsuhisa ended up accepting, four years later, the offer of Robert de Niro, who also brought producer Meir Teper into the business, to open the first Nobu in New York. The brand now has around sixty restaurants around the world, all inaugurated with the traditional sake ceremony, a symbol of sharing, openness and good fortune, according to Nobuyuki. To believe that it works, since Nobu claims six million customers a year.
In 2013, the brand took on a new dimension by opening its first hotel in Las Vegas. An idea of Robert de Niro. “Hotels often offered to put a Nobu restaurant at their place. Whether they were already very well known or brand new, they did it for the same reasons: to give a kind of cachet, credibility, to attract people. But if they asked us to do it for them, why not do it for ourselves? he says, sounding like a Scorsese character with the right trick to get his hands on the rivals’ jackpot – in this case, a simple hotel franchise system.
Robert de Niro’s restaurants, more than a backup plan
A strategist investor, Robert de Niro is also a behind-the-scenes boss, like Sam “Ace” Rothstein, his “Casino” character who stormed into kitchens to demand that every muffin be topped with the exact same number of blueberries? The actor smiles. “Sometimes, yes, of course, I notice things…” But by his own admission, his most personal investment is at the Greenwich Hotel. This one belongs to him. The establishment, a former garage, adjacent to the TriBeCa Film Center, the office and service building dedicated to the film industry, stronghold of its New York stronghold. He chose the furniture, and decorated it with his father’s paintings.
In the past, Robert de Niro described opening his first restaurant as a back-up plan, in case his career, as he slowly approached 50, took a turn for the worse. Today, he who will celebrate his 80th birthday this summer, nuance: “At the time, I thought things more simply. I really liked the small restaurant of a friend, Drew Nieporent, a friendly, simple place where I often went. Two blocks away, I had just started the TriBeCa Film Center and we had a nice space downstairs, with that really nice original tile floor. It was the perfect place, the right thing to do. »
To hear him speak, it is difficult not to wonder: has the entrepreneur taken precedence over the actor, who has been a little less present in recent years, like a Francis Ford Coppola who does more of wine than of films? “Not really, I do both. Frances too. He makes beautiful things, wine of course, but he also has beautiful hotels. I went to some of his establishments, I watch what he does, you can see that he likes it, and so do I. And again, it wasn’t the actor who answered.
Nobu Marrakech, on the roof of the ocher city
The Nobu Marrakech is in the heart of the city, in the Hivernage district.
Nobu / © Nobu
“Wasabi on couscous?” joked Ahmed Bennani, owner of Nobu Marrakech during the inauguration of his hotel. “Perhaps, but sometimes the most unexpected combinations provide the most delicious experiences!” The idea, it will be understood, is to marry fantasized Orients.
Housed within the walls of the former Pearl Hotel, in the heart of the city in the Hivernage district, the Nobu Marrakech is located a stone’s throw from the medina souk and the Djemaa el-Fna square. The 5-star hotel, combining Moroccan and Japanese influences, offers 71 suites, a Nobu restaurant, of course, a spa, but above all a rare rooftop with swimming pool and a splendid panoramic view of the ocher city.
The splendid panoramic view of Marrakech from the rooftop.
Nobu / © Nobu
For this first address in Africa, the Nobu franchise has focused on the pearl of Moroccan tourism. “A city known around the world for its tourism, a cosmopolitan place, the choice was obvious”, underlines the CEO of the brand, Trevor Horwell. “The hotels are rather traditional in Marrakech, we think we can bring something different, modern. »
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