Restaurant managers beware: Stewart Rahr is a loose cannon.
The flamboyant pharmaceutical billionaire, who calls himself “Stewie Rah Rah, the No. 1 king of all fun,” recently lost his cool after staffers at Nobu Fifty-Seven, a swanky restaurant in midtown Manhattan, refused to move diners so Rahr could sit at his favorite table, according to the New York Post.
“He called me the C-word and said he would kill me,” a Nobu manager told the Post, which has reported that Rahr is now banned from the restaurant’s 25 locations worldwide.
Rahr, whose net worth is an estimated $1.6 billion, was the owner of Kinray, the world's largest privately owned pharmaceutical distributor before it was bought by Cardinal Health in 2010 for $1.3 billion.
Following his Nobu tirade, Rahr reportedly sent an email to the restaurant’s founder, Drew Nieporent, with several celebrities copied including Leonardo DiCaprio, Donald Trump and Nobu co-owner Robert De Niro.
“DREW U SHOULD BE AWARE OF THE ONLY 2 RULES hanging over my employee entrance for the past 41 yrs,” Rahr wrote. “Rule #1 CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT!!!! Rule #2 EVEN IF CUSTOMER IS PLUCKEN WRONG SEE RULE #1.”
Nobu's hardly the first business to break rule No. 1. In October, an all-you-can-eat buffet in England banned two patrons for eating too much. In Berlin, a cafe installed a giant pin-shaped concrete pole to prevent customers from entering with baby-strollers. And in the U.S., a new website recently launched that helps business owners blacklist bad clients.
Nor is this the first time Rahr's gotten the boot. In 2005, he was asked to leave a fundraiser for Haiti in the Hamptons after pushing his way into photos with Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep.
Paparazzi frequently capture images of Rahr rubbing elbows with A-listers, including a photo taken at an NYC gala in October with rapper Kanye West, who, in his 2010 hit “See Me Now,” famously sang, “I might walk in Nobu with no shoes; He just walked in Nobu like it was Whole Foods!”
Related
Before You Go
