Robert De Niro Nobu - H 2012
Getty ImagesNobu Malibu, which has been ensconced for 13 years in a charming, low-key corner of the Country Mart shopping center, will soon depart for larger, more dramatic new beachfront digs a few minutes further south at 22706 Pacific Coast Highway, the restaurant’s director of operations, Santiago Rodriguez, tells THR.
Just in time for the summer high season, the celebrity-stuffed sushi spot, popular with everyone from Britney Spears to Robert Downey Jr., is currently scheduled to open in June as part of a sleek commercial development built by Oracle head Larry Ellison, a Malibu resident with multiple real estate holdings in the area.
Designed by architecture firm Studio PCH (renderings of the restaurant can be viewed here), construction began in October 2010. The new 6,000-square-foot space, defined primarily by teak and concrete, juts out over the sand.
Seating 220 patrons, the new Nobu site was previously the Windsail restaurant. An adjoining part of the development, which once housed another Malibu dining staple, PierView, does not yet have a known tenant, although Wolfgang Puck, whose nearby Granita closed in 2005, at one point seriously considered taking a lease on the property.
The ever-expanding international Nobu chain, co-owned by Robert De Niro, has locations in London, Moscow, Dubai and beyond. Founder Nobu Matushisa is best known for his Peruvian-influenced cuisine, and in particular for popularizing a frequently imitated signature dish of miso-glazed black cod.
