Where to find pink sand, palm trees and actor Robert De Niro

It is odd enough to find yourself travelling by helicopter from one Caribbean island to another for lunch, even if your destination is Nobu Barbuda, an outpost of the famous restaurant plunked down on a semi-deserted beach.

- Sarah Lyall

It is odd in a different way to arrive and spot American actor Robert De Niro, 81, dressed in a pair of shorts and a tiny bucket hat, waiting for you at a table in the back.

But this is his restaurant, and soon, it will be his new resort, the Nobu Beach Inn, scheduled to open at the end of 2025.

Aimed at high-end travellers willing to part with upwards of US$2,500 (S$3,390) a night for a one-bedroom bungalow, it is the latest project in the Hollywood star's expanding hospitality empire that began when he and a partner opened the Tribeca Grill in the Manhattan borough of New York City in 1990.

In 1994, De Niro helped persuade acclaimed Japanese chef Nobu Matsuhisa, whose Matsuhisa restaurant in Beverly Hills, California, had become a celebrity favourite, to open a branch in Manhattan - and to bestow upon it his first, rather than last, name.

More Nobu restaurants followed, and in 2013, the first Nobu Hotel opened at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Now, Nobu Hospitality, comprising De Niro, Matsuhisa and film producer Meir Teper, has an international portfolio of 42 hotels that are already open or in development, as well as 12 residential developments and 56 restaurants. Separately, De Niro is also a partner in the Greenwich Hotel in New York.