Robert De Niro on Taking the Nobu Hospitality Empire to Egypt

“I was just happy getting my food brought to my apartment each day,” says Robert De Niro—that trademark smile creeping up to the corners of his eyes—as he sets out Nobu Hospitality’s origin story. “This was in the late 1980s, when I lived on La Cienega Boulevard, right across from Matsuhisa, and one of the waiters would bring it across the street, put it in my elevator, and it’d bring it up to the 10th floor where I lived.”

The restaurant—then just opened and…