April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Nobu, the Japanese restaurant chain co-founded by Robert De Niro, says Russians won’t forgo dining in style as the economic crisis squeezes spending in the Moscow luxury district surrounding its latest eatery.

“Even with two seatings a day, lunch and dinner, the restaurant will be very profitable,” Nobu’s local partner, millionaire developer Aras Agalarov, told Bloomberg Television as the restaurant opened its doors today following three years of planning. Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, the restaurant’s namesake and executive chef, said he was looking forward to creating Russian dishes featuring local caviar and king crab.

Nobu Moscow, fitted with dark wood and burnished gold light fixtures, is on the top floor of Agalarov’s four-story Crocus luxury retail building, situated on the corner of Stoleshnikov Lane. Some of the area’s previous tenants have fallen victim to the economic crisis, with stores selling PPR SA’s Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney fashions closing earlier this year. A Louis Vuitton shop across the street from Nobu remains open.

An average meal will probably cost the equivalent of $89, Emin Agalarov, Aras’s son and the head of the Nobu project, told reporters. Nobu’s Las Vegas branch features $50 lobster shiitake salad, Kobe beef at $32 per ounce and a $38, two-piece portion of bluefin toro sushi, its Web site shows.

Nobu will attempt to buck a trend that has seen sales at high-end Moscow eateries drop as much as 50 percent since the financial crisis began, according to consulting group Restcon. Russian retail spending contracted for the first time in a decade in February and disposable income shrank 4.7 percent.

Chinchilla Discount

Matsuhisa, who opened the first Nobu in New York in 1994, said it was “made easy” for him to come to Moscow after he found Agalarov, who provided the funding and bought out a former apartment building to create the venue. The chef spoke to reporters at a briefing with De Niro before the restaurant’s gala opening tonight.

Agalarov’s Crocus Group builds housing and runs luxury malls, an exhibition center and a home-improvement chain. He was ranked No. 92 on Forbes Magazine’s list of rich Russians in 2008, with a fortune then estimated at about $1.2 billion.

Since the 2008 Forbes list was compiled, many billionaires have suffered a reversal of fortune. Oleg Deripaska, the richest Russian on the 2008 list, has lost 88 percent of his fortune in the past year, Forbes magazine says, and his United Co. Rusal aluminum company received a $4.5 billion bailout loan from a state-owned bank.

Agalarov said that while he’s confident about Nobu’s future, his luxury investments will suffer. Crocus luxury sales may fall 40 percent this year, he said, worse than the 20 percent drop estimated for his Tvoi Dom home-improvement chain.

“If someone’s asking for loans from the state at the same time he’s living a very luxurious lifestyle, it’s not compatible, so they’ll need to adjust,” Agalarov said. “Not because they’ve really altered their views, but just because they have to behave in a certain way for the time being.”

The stairs to the 168-seat Nobu restaurant lead through Crocus shops selling Tony Ward gowns starting at 12,000 euros ($15,800). A chinchilla wrap points to the new reality: it’s been marked down from 628,000 rubles ($18,700) to 211,200 rubles, a 66 percent discount.

To contact the reporter on this story: Torrey Clark in Moscow at tclark8@bloomberg.net; Ellen Pinchuk in Moscow at epinchuk@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 9, 2009 13:42 EDT