At the rate he’s going, Nobuyuki Matsuhisa may as well hang up his celebrity chef’s pins and put on the permanent mantle of a luxury hotelier.
For now, all eyes are on Barcelona where the Rockwell Group’s Madrid and New York studios have converted the 1970s pile that was formerly Gran Hotel Torre de Catalunya into a freshly minted Nobu outpost. The handsome 259-room property soft opened late last year and a fleet of 43 suites – occupying the 6th to 22nd floors – came online recently, ready for travel post lockdown.
Of the latter, a warm sense of the Japanese aesthetic pervades, particularly in the Umi and Sake suites, which Rockwell has layered with woven cane, wall panels inked with calligraphic waves, lashings of bronze, delicate porcelain vases, slender timber slatted screens. In the plush 22nd-level Nobu suite, a particularly stunning rendition of a tea-pot is suspended over a stonecast fire-pit alongside four window bays with unrivalled views of Barcelona and the Mediterranean. §
