Opening Shot is a column that peeks inside new hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops with dreamy interiors.
Nobu Grand Wailea
Location: Wailea, Maui
Designer: Rockwell Group
On Offer: Chef Nobu Matsuhisa is not one to rest on his laurels. Instead, he’s taking his brand, at once a household name and a culinary status symbol, to new heights, debuting the 56th outpost of Nobu at the sprawling Grand Wailea, a Waldorf Astoria resort. “To finish working means my passion is gone,” Matsuhisa remarked during a pre-opening press event.
The latest expression of Nobu’s longstanding collaboration with Rockwell Group, the 13,000-square-foot space filters the hallmarks of its predecessors—echoes of Japanese design sensibilities and a dramatic sense of scale—through the island’s textural palette. A knotted rope installation from artist Windy Chien, who lived in Hawaii for a decade, punctuates the clerestory windows. Swaths of dip-dyed indigo linen ripple overhead.
