Billionaire Banned From Nobu’s Restaurants After Throwing Tantrum Over Table
There are only two people in the world who have standing tables at any of Matsuhisa Nobu’s Michelin-starred restaurants: co-owners Drew Nieporent and Robert DeNiro (actor). Please note how neither of those names are Stewart Rahr, who, despite being a billionaire philanthropist and cancer survivor, is apparently still a total jerk. (In the following paragraphs, please count how many instances of dickishness occur. If you spot them all, you win a prize!)
Our Whiny Billionaires correspondents at the New York Post got their hands on an email Rahr sent to Nobu and Nieporent and cc’d to a host of celebrities after he was so cruelly denied a table at Midtown’s Nobu 57, after showing up late to his own wife’s surprise birthday party and allegedly offering $1000 to the people sitting at his table to leave. He later claimed that they’d been intruding on his wife’s party by accident and he picked up their tab.
Prior to sending the email, Rahr allegedly called the restaurant’s manager, Sharon Hofstetter, and when she failed to return his call in time, he confronted her in person in front of the entire restaurant: “He called me the C-word and said he would kill me,” Hofstetter recounted.
Still unpleased, Rahr called Nobu, becoming further enraged when the chef didn’t call back after 48 hours. We agree that Nobu would have been a jerk, too, except for the part where Nobu was in Europe taking care of a friend WHO WAS DYING.
And thus, this ziggurat of dickishness leads to the apex: the email.
The Brooklyn-born mogul then fired off a fuming e-mail to Nobu boss Drew Nieporent — and CC’d a host of A-listers, demanding Hofstetter be fired or suspended.
Rahr, 66, ripped Hofstetter, 34, as “pompous,” “miserable” and guilty of “despicable behavior” in the note, which was copied to Leonard DiCaprio, Alicia Keys, Mark Wahlberg and other stars he claims are his pals.
…The man who calls himself “Stewie Rah Rah” sent copies to scores of his closest friends, including Donald Trump and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
They were treated to a reminder of just how rich Rahr — who sold his pharmaceutical-distribution company, Kinray, for $1.3 billion in 2010 — really is.
“I EMPLOYED almost 2,000 employees,” generating revenue of $5 billion, he wrote. “Thats ‘B’ AS IN BOY NOT AN ‘M’ AS IN MAN.”
Fed up, Nieporent and Nobu finally banned Rahr from their restaurants, because anyone who tries to wield authority by CC’ing Donald Trump on an email is obviously not a good patron — even if he’s the largest donor to the Make-A-Wish foundation. (Can we wish that you would go ballistic on other major restaurants in the city? Everyone would laugh so hard at you that their illnesses would be cured, Patch Adams style.)
If you’ve been counting the instances of dickishness, congratulations! You win Self-Awareness.
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