What To Expect From The Nobu Hotel
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Nobu Matsuhisa was at Caesars Palace last week to talk about the new Nobu Hotel tower that will be opening around November. Here are a few basic facts he and Caesars President Gary Selesner revealed:
– The Nobu Hotel Tower will take over the 40-year-old Centurion Tower. It’s 180 newly renovated rooms (including 18 suites) suites will retain the same basic architectural footprint of the old tower.
– The tower will not feature gaming.
– A 350-seat Nobu restaurant, the largest Nobu in the world, will sit at the base of the tower and will “feel like the lobby of a boutique hotel” (see the artist rendering of the restaurant in the photo below). In addition to other cuisine, it will offer teppanyaki.
– Guests will enter through the main Caesars Palace entrances, then be escorted across the casino floor to the Nobu Tower lobby, where a host will greet them with an iPad and escort them to their room to be checked in.
– All dining throughout the tower, including room service, will be provided by Nobu. Because of this, the chef and his team will be creating many items, such as breakfast choices, for the first time.
– The sake list will include approximately 15 different sakes. It will feature Hokusetsu products and Nobu’s private label, exclusively.
– Caesars Palace is spending approximately $30 million on the project
– The Nobu at the Hard Rock Casino will remain open
– A second Nobu Hotel is planned for Saudi Arabia next year
After the press conference, I conducted a personal interview with Chef Nobu. Here are some excerpts.
How did this hotel come to be, and what were your first thoughts when it was suggested?
My partner is Robert DeNiro. He has hotels in New York City, and we have a lot of restaurants inside hotels. So he said, ‘why don’t you open a hotel?’
We’ve heard a lot today about the ‘spirit of Nobu’ or the ‘feeling of Nobu’ that you plan to bring to this hotel. For people who have never been to a Nobu, how would you describe that spirit or feeling that you’re bringing to this hotel?
Guests come to our restaurants only to eat. Now we’ll have a hotel here where people will stay. So if people have never tried Nobu’s food, now Nobu’s food is all over the hotel. Guests can take any of Nobu’s tastes in the lounge, hotel rooms, dining room. So after the hotel, maybe people will understand Nobu’s concept of food.
Is the food at the heart of this entire project?
Well food is very important. For example, we have restaurants in hotels, I don’t want to mention which hotels, but not good hotels. But when guests come to my restaurants they stay at the hotel. So we support the hotels.
And the restaurant business, as I mentioned, is good food and good service. Now the product of a hotel is hospitality, and comfortable rooms, and good food. Caesars Palace has a great reputation in Las Vegas, so it means a great partnership. Now we have to grow together.
How will the restaurants, only the restaurants, be different in Caesars Palace and The Hard Rock?
The Nobu restaurant concept, in all of the restaurants, the basic menu is the same. But I have the restaurant Matsuhisa in Los Angeles, and a few minutes away we have Nobu L.A. It’s only a few minutes away. And it’s the same concept, but with a different customer clientele
So the guests will be the main difference between The Hard Rock and Caesars?
Yes
