What it’s really like to stay at a €1337-a-night luxury hotel
Nobu hotels are fantastic - but are they worth the price?
Nobu’s hotels and restaurants are widely recognised as amongst the world’s most glamorous. The brand blends modern cool with minimalist Japanese tradition and staying at one of its hotels is often seen as the height of sophisticated luxury. Its restaurants serve some of the best food on the planet.
It was co-founded by Robert de Niro, and no doubt many patrons flock to it to try and buy a bit of his lifestyle. The same mentality as buying a bottle of Kylie Minogue wine at Tesco - only on a somewhat higher financial level.
To reach its outpost at Santorini, Greece, I took a €1.60 bus from the town of Oia to Fira, another bus from Fira to Imerovigli, making a similar dent in my little-used wallet, and then a 30-minute walk, hilly in places, along the ancient, stunning Oia-Fira trail, in the hot sun.
About 800 metres from the hotel I asked a man if he knew where the hotel was, just to make sure I was walking the right way. He pointed to it. It was so near it would clearly be a short walk but he was incredulous that I was walking to the hotel rather than taking a taxi. Yet it had been a wonderful walk with incredible views, and a great keep fit workout to boot. I’m surprised walking instead of taking a taxi is often seen as so odd these days.
So I rocked up to reception inelegantly dragging my wheelie suitcase and a rucksack. With rooms at the time I stayed costing up to €1337 per night, I must have been the first Nobu guest who hadn’t arrived by taxi, limousine or boat.
The receptionist’s initial look of friendliness soon turned to what seemed to be mild disdain when she realised I wasn’t one of the usual moneyed set that stayed there, and perhaps that I wasn’t wearing a distressed Prada t-shirt but instead a Primark one with a hole in it (can anyone really tell the difference, anyway?)
I surveyed my accommodation. It was one of just 25 so-called suites and villas at the hotel. They were all grandly classed as either suites or villas, never just rooms, a practice carried out by almost all luxury hotels these days. Yet the dictionary definition of a suite is to have interconnected separate rooms, and mine simply had one room, essentially with a bed and sofa area, and a bathroom off it - although there was no bath, just a shower. But ‘suite’ sounds so much more exciting than ‘room’, doesn’t it?
That said, my room was absolutely gorgeous, with curvy cave-style bright white walls, ceilings and floors broken up by earthy-coloured curtains, rugs and cushions. Stylish Japanese-accented wooden furniture, original artworks and a balcony overlooking the swimming pools and sea added to the wow factor. Yet despite all that I couldn’t help thinking how anyone would routinely pay more than £1000 a night for it.
It’s possible to experience Nobu Santorini just for the day if your budget doesn’t stretch to an overnight stay. However, I don’t know what that would cost. If you book online it asks you to select the time you want for breakfast or lunch, and a form to fill in your credit card details comes up - but there’s no indication of what it would all cost.
Much as I tried, I couldn’t fault the room I was given, except for the shower. There was a rainhead shower (just a posh way of saying ‘a shower with a big shower head’) and another with a hose. The hose shower didn’t work. Ok, it’s not top of the list of human suffering, but it was surprising it wasn’t working considering the price of the room.
Declining a €13 minibar beer and a €9 small bag of Kettle Chips, I set about my tasks for the day, starting with doing some laundry in the little stone sink. The way things were going, laundry prices at this place probably started at €19 or something per sock, so I was damn well going to do it myself.
The sinks in posh hotels invariably have no plug, or if they do, it’s not an effective one, so washing clothes tends to be a bit more problematic than it could be.
I hung my t-shirts and undies out on the sun-drenched terrace, completely spoiling the uber-glamorous effect the hotel had painstakingly constructed. It had done well, as this hotel is a rework of a long-established previous hotel on the site, the Omma, which in turn was transformed from some mid-range holiday villas. I was surprised that at this price point the hotel hadn’t been conceived from scratch, as there was a slight feeling of being in a mid-market resort hotel that had been tarted up.
Rooms are quite close together: mine was next to the breakfast terrace and I had to remember not to ever walk around starkers as a number of tables could look straight in - and I didn’t want to give them an 8am shock as they munched on a sausage for breakfast or what have you.
Being located right on the Oia to Fira trail, peopled walked right by the hotel very regularly. It’s sort of nice that the hotel isn’t fenced off and people passing by can look right in - the world needs far fewer gated communities - but even if you didn’t know the brand, you could see that this is a very expensive hotel attracting a very wealthy set. I couldn’t help wondering what a very poor person would feel walking past and looking in at such opulence just a few metres away.
Everything was centred around the two pools: the restaurant, bar and breakfast terrace, with soft music playing the whole time. I found it curious that most guests seemed to lounge around the pools a lot yet after a whole day I hadn’t seen one person jump into them. Perhaps they felt it would seem too uncool to do so.
Predictably, there was an Adonis and Venus or two in expensive beachwear (not that my fashion antennae is strong enough to really tell whether it was from Armani or the middle isle at Lidl). There was a guy lying on a lounger, top to toe in a long-sleeved shirt, trousers and trainers, not really getting into the poolside vibe at all.
Two obviously very affluent girls took endless selfies around the grounds. I couldn’t help thinking they should pause and read a book or something. And no, Hello Magazine doesn’t count as a book.
Later the sun very decisively went in but people were still sunbathing despite the clouds. It seemed pretty desperate, but I suppose if you have spent all this money, you’re blooming well going to soak up the Nobu vibe whatever it takes.
I went to the gym. I was the only one there - I hadn’t seen anyone go there all day - and there was no evidence that anyone had been there at all. Though the staff were so on it the whole time they had probably hoovered up any used towels or water bottles within seconds. With staff at your beck and call at all times at this hotel, I was half expecting a member of staff to be on hand to lift the weights for me while I was in the gym.
The next morning breakfast was impeccably served on a terrace that overlooked the beautiful caldera and Thirassia island. It’s that attention to little details that makes a great breakfast: strong, but not too strong coffee, served hot, but not too hot, but not luke warm; freshly squeezed orange juice from the best oranges, that are saturated in flavour; proper, melt-in-the-mouth heated croissants, not the dry, almost stale stodgy ones you usually get. And so on.
A large spread of food was provided, and therefore I had naturally stuffed a couple of plastic bags in my pocket nicked from security at Luton Airport, and tried to make sandwiches for lunch in as dignified a way as possible. A German guy at the next table wearing tennis gear (yet there were no discernible clues that he played the sport or indeed had had any exercise at all since about 1983) looked at me in disgust as I did so. His table was littered with barely picked at and half-eaten plates of food. What a waste.
When the cleaner came to my room he was very friendly, polite and helpful, but when I said the towels didn’t need replacing he said he had to give me a new one as one of them was crumpled. So much for saving the planet. He then said he needed to clean the floor, and I said, really, that wasn’t necessary, it was spotless. He was clearly under the strictest of orders. So I let him go ahead.
I was surprised that the sustainability credentials weren’t stronger. Sure, they do things like use glass water bottles, but guests are greeted with around 12 little plastic bottles of things like shampoo, conditioner and mouthwash - all of which I of course pilfered after about three seconds.
I was looking forward to dinner, as Nobu’s fusion cuisine blending traditional Japanese dishes with Peruvian ingredients is supposed to be outstanding.
When I entered the restaurant - a lovely, rather swish al fresco affair overlooking the sea and ideal for sundowners - all the staff stopped what they were doing and shouted out “irasshaimase!”
This was a tad alarming, and for a second I wondered whether it was Japanese for “arrest this guy for nicking the shampoos and conditioners”, but it turned out that it is a Japanese restaurant tradition, said to create a feeling of hospitality.
However, despite the restaurant being just a third full, I was put at a most abysmal table in the corner, with an outdoor heater right in front of me, almost completely obscuring my view. Once I’d been moved to a much better table I was given a rum-based cocktail with quite a kick, and it was surprisingly cheap for a place like this, at €20.
But you have to have very deep pockets for the rest of it. I had sashimi salad with matsuhisa dressing (strips of salmon, with chives, €32), and baby spinach salad with dry miso (€25) which was surprisingly delicious and unusual, with a distinct miso taste. The third course was equally tasty, rock shrimp tempura with ponzu sauce (€40) followed by Nobu’s signature black cod miso, coming in at €60. I’ve never tasted fish like it, it was utterly delicious. A bit fell on the table and a waiter came to clear it up about two milliseconds later, but I stuffed it in my mouth immediately, I wasn’t wasting a gramme of the stuff.
There’s this idea that if you visit a Nobu you’ll be shoulder to shoulder with celebrities, probably something like Robert de Niro chatting to Al Pacino one side of you, and a Kardashian or two on the other. However, I didn’t see any celebrities, not even a newsreader from Points West.
Instead, I was sat next to a group of flashy bankers, and they started discussing the merits of different credit card companies. They ordered Wagu beef at €105 per 75 grammes. One asked the waiter whether they had any fish that wasn’t on the menu. To sound sophisticated I suppose.
Everyone, just everyone in the restaurant was wearing white trainers, which was on trend at the time I visited. I looked at them all and just thought they were all such sheep. But no doubt they were all looking at me at the same time and thinking what a sad guy with his black trainers, he hasn’t got a clue about changing fashions. No doubt they were also thinking ‘surely his Primark t-shirt is an ironic fashion statement’.
So, Nobu is a mixed bag. For its little shortcomings it is an utter delight to stay there and the food is exceptional - but you will certainly be paying through the nose for it.
Thank you oh thank you for making me never want to visit that hotel! ( maybe just for lunch) Please do this at every high end so that I can get rid of my latent Fomo!!
Thanks for sharing an honest review of your experience!
The closest I got to staying at a Nobu hotel was...eating at a Nobu restaurant (and the shrimp tempura was great, too).