First Look Inside the Very Japanese Nobu Restaurant

Grid View

• The dining room at Nobu Restaurant & Lounge. The light fixtures looks like pillowy clouds.
• Another view of the dining room and the kitchen to the rear.
• The entrance to Nobu Restaurant & Lounge.
• Inside these leather pods sit the first teppanyaki grills in a Nobu.
• Origami lamps hang from the ceiling.
• Cleopatra Way is now Nobu Way at Caesars Palace.
• Basket pods at Nobu Restaurant & Grill.
• The restaurant isn't quite ready to open, but will on Feb. 4, with a gala celebration on Feb. 2.
• Another view of the dining room.
• The staff gets ready.

Here it is, the very first Nobu Hotel inside Caesars Palace, opening Feb. 4. The $30 million project, taking over the former Centurion Tower, includes the 12,775-square-foot Nobu Restaurant & Lounge, the largest of Nobu Matsuhisa's restaurants. Seating 327 guests, the restaurant is the first Nobu to include teppanyaki tables where chefs cook right in front of guests.

The restaurant, designed by New York architect David Rockwell, includes light fixtures that look like paper clouds and wood wall coverings. Guests who aren't staying in the tower can access the restaurant across from Old Homestead Steakhouse. The menu is also set to be a first, offering different dishes than any other Nobu.

Upstairs, guests will find 181 rooms and suites, all redecorated by the Rockwell team to emit a Japanese feel. Guests bypass the front desk and instead check in at the Nobu lobby. A traditional Japanese tea experience and rice crackers await in the rooms, which go for $249 to $499 a night. Customized Japanese calligraphy highlights the walls in the rooms. Bathrooms feature teak fittings and black Umi tiles in the showers.

The in-room dining menu offers sushi and customized bento boxes for breakfast. In the rooms, the mini-bar features organic Wild Poppy blood orange chili juice, chocolate-dipped Pocky pretzels, Japanese beer and Nobu's signature brands of chilled sake and Genmai-Cha brown rice green tea.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the tower, which originally planned to open last October, "took longer because a restaurant had to be created in a space that was once a retail store and back-of- the-house area."
· Opening Day Nearing for Nobu Hotel at Caesars Palace [LVRJ]
· All Coverage of Nobu Restaurant & Lounge [~ELV~]