Robert De Niro takes on hospitality industry at the helm of Nobu empire

Robert De Niro attends the opening of Nobu's new restaurant in Doha, Qatar. (Nobu Doha, Four Seasons)

It’s been a very busy year for Robert De Niro, who at 72 shows no signs of slowing down. The two-time Oscar winner logged 165,000 miles of air travel in 2015. Maybe he, and not George Clooney, should have starred in “Up in the Air.”
But De Niro’s miles weren’t all acting-related.

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The expansive rooftop of Nobu Doha affords great city views in a luxurious setting. (Nobu Doha, Four Seasons)

In addition to appearing in four movies – including “Joy,” which hits theaters on Christmas Day – he continued to be a player in the hospitality business. When the makeup comes off, the real-life De Niro is a partner with chef Nobu Matsuhisa and former film producer Meir Teper in the luxurious Nobu restaurant and hotel chain.

Nobu opened a hotel in Manila and two restaurants – in the Moscow area and in Doha, Qatar – this year, and De Niro found time to attend all the openings.

Nobu Doha, on the shore of the Arabian Gulf at the Four Seasons, celebrated its grand opening last month, five years later than planned. “Its construction process was very long, because it was very unique to design: on the water, inside/outside, two bars, smoking/no-smoking and rooftop,” Matsuhisa said of the eight-year undertaking.

While Nobu Doha, with 284 seats, is the brand’s largest restaurant, its shell-like design provides intimate spaces as well as sweeping views of the gulf and Doha’s chic cityscape. At the restaurant’s grand-opening celebration, where 400 guests seemingly all wanted — and got — selfies with him, De Niro and Matsuhisa found some refuge in those nooks to sample the sushi and champagne.

But De Niro wasn’t in Doha for long. Two days after the restaurant’s formal launch he was outside Moscow for the opening of the second Nobu in the area – Nobu Crocus City, which imported a wood oven from Australia to craft Crocus City-specific plates like sea bass with mint salsa in addition to the usual Nobu staples.

On his first visit to Moscow since 2009, De Niro got some local media attention when he was asked at the inaugural gala if he – like boxer Roy Jones Jr. and actor Gerard Depardieu – would like to request Russian citizenship. “Maybe,” he replied, which suggests that he may want to add “diplomat” to his resume someday.

Nobu now has 32 restaurants and two hotels, with further expansion slated for 2016. It recently announced plans to open a restaurant in the West End section of Washington, D.C., late next year. “They have the president of the United States. I’d like to feed him,” Matsuhisa said.

While the new restaurants received positive reviews, Nobu Hotel Manila was named the worst new luxury hotel of 2015 by Luxury Travel Intelligence. The members-only travel-advisory’s co-founder told Fortune that the first Nobu hotel in Asia “seems to be suffering from poor management.” Back in May, when the 321-room hotel opened, De Niro told reporters, “To me, you have to do more than lend your name, you gotta be there in order to just be more a part of it and really believe in it.” So there may be more trips to Manila in De Niro’s future.

If there are, it will just mean more time in the air. While in Doha – in the midst of a 14-day stretch that included stops in Macau, New York, London, and Moscow – De Niro talked with us about his travel preferences.

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A traditional sake ceremony at the opening of De Niro's new Nobu restaurant. (Nobu Doha, Four Seasons)

FoxNews.com: What’s your routine the night before a trip?
Robert De Niro: The toughest thing is just packing what you think you’re going to need.
FoxNews.com: What is it that you think you need usually then? What are the essentials?
Robert De Niro: I sometimes think that if I’m stuck in a place longer for whatever reason, then I might need more of this, more of that, reading material, clothes. Taking more of everything just to make sure I’m not in that situation.
FoxNews.com: What do you wear on a flight?
Robert De Niro: Comfortable clothes.
FoxNews.com: Jeans, t-shirts, that sort of stuff?
Robert De Niro: Exactly.
FoxNews.com: What do you prefer: window, aisle?
Robert De Niro: Window.
Matsuhisa: Private.
De Niro: [Laughing] That’s best, of course.
FoxNews.com: What’s your favorite way to pass the time in an airport or waiting for a connection?
Robert De Niro: Just to get through everything as quickly as possible so I don’t have idle time.
FoxNews.com: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever had on an airplane?
Robert De Niro: Stale nuts.
FoxNews.com:  How about the best?
Robert De Niro: Fresh nuts.
FoxNews.com:  What cities do you visit the most?
Robert De Niro: I’ve been to Doha at least five or six times. LA, Paris, London.
FoxNews.com:  What’s the first thing you do when you enter a hotel room?

Robert De Niro: Well it’s hard when you enter a hotel room when your whole time thing is turned around. Say you’re arriving in the Far East and there’s a 12-hour turnaround. You’re arriving in their morning but it’s your middle of the night. Or the middle of their day, but the middle of your night. Or vice versa.

And in my case, it’s just people wanting to help you get settled and this and that. But you just want to go to sleep, but you might not be able to because you’ve got to get settled, get certain things done, and then you got to start the day.

I don't exactly love Pacino and De Niro. I'm not quite sure why everyone does

Among the many inviolable rules of film criticism - that Nic Cage is a genius; that Terminator 2 was better than the first Terminator; that Kevin Costner will never, ever not be absurd – the most inviolable of all centres on Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, the holy trinity that, whether you like their films or not, must be bowed to as towering luminaries.

There’s no question that we owe these guys a debt of gratitude, not only for the mob movies of the last 40 years, but for the equally strong tradition of name-dropping Marty or Bob as a sign a young actor has made it. Old guys whose paths they once crossed nurse the anecdotes like gold. Cameras at awards ceremonies close in on their faces, which are often baffled in the manner of a monarch so grand he can’t make sense of the mortals around him.

I’ve had cause to think about this reverence twice in the last week: first when Kyle Smith wrote a piece in the New York Post claiming that women, to their detriment, don’t get Goodfellas; and then again after a run-in with De Niro, the star of that movie, who is promoting a new film. (Our interview was brief. De Niro was either out of sorts, or, after a lifetime of being toadied to by everyone he meets, is simply too celebrated to conduct a normal conversation.)

Smith’s piece was roundly mocked for being silly and reductive, and, sure, lots of women love Goodfellas. After re-watching it, however, I’m not one of them – and if I never have to sit through the Godfather again, either, I’m pretty sure I’ll survive.

These films, so often cited in best-of lists and lip-synched to by legions of fans, are long-winded, dimly lit and over-rated. And while their narrative arcs might be great (guy kills other guy, gets killed by first guy’s friends, who kill each other ad infinitum until the Feds yell “Stop!”) and the acting convincing, they are also jerk-off movies – in this case, for the kind of man who mourns the end of the age of machismo – passing themselves off as profound or insightful.

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I don’t want to be too much of a buzzkill about all this: mobster tales are fun in the way that cartoons are fun. What I struggle with (which, like the verb “ to find problematic”, has become the polite way to say “loathe”) is the way that mobster movies invite us to believe that they are deeply meaningful in a way that excuses the heroic portrayal of their gratuitous, male-centered violence. Years ago, I remember running into a friend after she’d been at her boyfriend’s for dinner. “He made me watch Once Upon A Time In America”, she said miserably of the Sergio Leone love-letter to New York’s violent past. “That horrible rape scene seems to go on forever.”

All actors become proxies for the roles that they play, and so Pacino and De Niro are, one suspects, loved less for their acting ability than for their status as men who pound heads into tables. The wives in these movies always get pushed down at some point, too, without in any way denting the likeability of the hero. (This happened in the recent James Brown biopic, Get On Up, in which the soul singer casually batters his wife and goes on to win the movie.) But presenting a slightly more complex understanding of violence – let alone domestic violence – doesn’t have to be limited to a Movie of the Week or a Ken Loach vehicle, and actors worth universal acclaim and admiration should be able to portray violent characters as anti-heroes, not just heroes.

Calling out movie stars for self-importance is like asking a dog why it scratches its fleas - it’s the nature of the beast. But in the case of Pacino-De Niro-Scorsese, do we have to collude with them in such slavish devotion to the work? Because even if you love Goodfellas and the Godfather, Little Fockers and Grudge Match should act as a natural break to hero worship and bring you resoundingly back to your senses.