LAS VEGAS -- So what made Casino actor Robert De Niro deal himself in on a real-life hotel in Las Vegas? The man known for playing gruff, tough guys has a soft spot for luxe lodgings and an eye for design, and besides, "it's good to do new things," says the 69-year-old Oscar winner. He's sitting with business associates in a suite at the first Nobu Hotel, which opened Monday in the old Centurion Tower at Caesars Palace.

The 181-room-and-suite boutique property is a project from partners including De Niro and Japan-born chef Nobu Matsuhisa (Madonna, David Beckham and Kate Winslet are fans) and Caesars Entertainment. It's anchored by the 26th and largest Nobu restaurant and lounge.

De Niro, in town for the opening and far more laid-back than the mobsters he's played or the volatile bookie dad in Silver Linings Playbook, for which he earned an Oscar nomination, says the idea is to provide a peaceful, Asian-style "oasis" in the heart of frenzied Vegas. "You can go out and do everything and come back here" to a cocoon.

He won't be glad-handing guests à la his Casino character, he says (Caesars manages day-to-day hotel operations). "But I'll come in and out" and offer suggestions.

Zen-like simplicity

De Niro, also an owner of The Greenwich Hotel in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood, joins a handful of acting peers who have taken roles in the hospitality business. Among them:

• Richard Gere and actress wife Carey Lowell are partners in the Bedford Post Inn in an estate-dotted area north of New York City.
• Robert Redford of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fame turned land he bought in Utah into the Sundance Resort.
• Screen legend Doris Day co-owns the Cypress Inn in Carmel, Calif., where fellow icon Clint Eastwood saved the historic Mission Ranch resort from developers.

When the Bedford Post opened, Gere told  he wanted to rescue a rundown former coaching inn in the town where he lives and turn it into a community "gathering place with really great food." The couple had a lot to learn about the difficult lodging business, Lowell said.
For the Vegas venture, De Niro, Matsuhisa and Meir Teper — partners in Nobu restaurants for two decades — enlisted architect/designer David Rockwell. His Rockwell Group is as A-list in its world as De Niro and Matsuhisa are in theirs. Rockwell projects include some of the renovation of the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, work on Aloft and W hotels, the Andaz Wall Street in New York, and parts of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas resort.

The aim is to offer "the best of Eastern rigor with the best of Western comfort," Rockwell says while leading a tour of Nobu. "You can't really out-glitz Vegas."
Indeed, the rooms are very non-Vegas. Caesars press materials call the style "comfortable simplicity." The rooms have a Japanese sensibility, emanating Zen via beds dressed simply in white, 350-thread-count linens and duvets, chocolate-colored, calligraphy-style horizontal brushstrokes on the walls, and cream/gray rugs emblazoned with calligraphy designs. Lighting is a contemporary take on Japanese lanterns.

Bathrooms boast deep basin sinks, a teak bench in the shower (no tubs in standard rooms, only in some suites) and a wooden ladder holding towels. All partners had a hand in the design and picking the furnishings.

Rockwell says designers were limited by the existing layout (350 square feet for a standard king room). That's a problem. Lowest-category accommodations at competing luxury properties, including Caesars' lavishly renovated Octavius Tower, Wynn, Encore, Trump, The Venetian, Palazzo, Bellagio and the Mandarin Oriental, are in the 500-square-foot-and-up range.

Feasts for the eyes, palate

Design mavens, on the other hand, will want to see Nobu (Architectural Digest was doing a photo shoot Saturday), the first in a planned hotel chain.

And the restaurant in the first chef-branded Vegas hotel is a big draw.
"I like to feed people and make them happy," says a grinning Matsuhisa, popping a piece of yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño into his mouth. Starring on the menu at the 327-seat Nobu, which is open to the public, are creative sushi and sashimi, black cod with miso (a De Niro favorite) and addictive tempura shrimp with creamy, spicy sauce.
Matsuhisa supervises the room-service menu as well. It includes various bento boxes of Japanese favorites, $22 green tea waffles with minty shiso syrup and citrusy yuzu whipped cream, as well as a whimsical $24 "bagel and lox" (a ring of seasoned crispy rice stands in for the bagel; the cream cheese is tofu "crema," and the smoked salmon is perfection).

The partners are banking on loyal Nobu customers who appreciate great food and want more personalized service and tranquility than is found at many other Vegas properties.

Before heading downstairs for a gala ribbon-cutting featuring models in short dresses made of origami, De Niro snacks on sushi and says, "We'll see what works well and what works less," and make tweaks.
"You take a chance" bringing such an unusual project to Vegas, he adds. "But why shouldn't we try it?"