Don’t you — and every celebrity in New York — know who I am?!
Blowhard billionaire Stewart Rahr has been banned from Nobu for life after allegedly trying to snag his favorite table by paying off diners and cursing out a manager, The Post has learned.
“He called me the C-word and said he would kill me,” the manager, Sharon Hofstetter, said of the table tirade last week at Midtown’s Nobu Fifty Seven.
The Brooklyn-born mogul then fired off a fuming e-mail to Nobu boss Drew Nieporent — and CC’d a host of A-listers, demanding Hofstetter be fired or suspended.
Rahr, 66, ripped Hofstetter, 34, as “pompous,” “miserable” and guilty of “despicable behavior” in the note, which was copied to Leonard DiCaprio, Alicia Keys, Mark Wahlberg and other stars he claims are his pals.
The restaurant notified Rahr on Wednesday that he was no longer welcome at Nobu Fifty Seven, nor at any of the other Nobu restaurants, which are co-owned by Nieporent, chef Nobu Matsuhisa and Robert De Niro.
There are 25 Nobu locations across the globe, including three in the city.
Hofstetter said she was not even in attendance on Oct. 24, when Rahr arrived at the West 57th Street hot spot for his wife Carol’s surprise birthday party.
Staffers said he got there late, then marched up to a table and demanded the people sitting there leave because it was “his.”
“They said no,” a bartender recalled, “so he offered to pay their bill” — which could have topped $1,000.
Said Hofstetter, “Nobody has a table here other than Nobu and Robert De Niro.”
The next day, Rahr called and left a message for her.
“I didn’t call him back right away, and that’s what I did,” she said.
So he came to the eatery and confronted Hofstetter in person, leading to an expletive-laced tirade that shocked onlookers.
“I’ve never had that happen,” Hofstetter said.
Still not satisfied, Rahr sent an all-caps, typo-strewn e-mail to Nieporent on Oct. 31.
He whined that the chef, who had been in Europe tending to a dying friend, did not call him back within 48 hours.
The man who calls himself “Stewie Rah Rah” sent copies to scores of his closest friends, including Donald Trump and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
They were treated to a reminder of just how rich Rahr — who sold his pharmaceutical-distribution company, Kinray, for $1.3 billion in 2010 — really is.
“I EMPLOYED almost 2,000 employees,” generating revenue of $5 billion, he wrote. “Thats ‘B’ AS IN BOY NOT AN ‘M’ AS IN MAN.”
Rahr told The Post the flap started when Hofstetter agreed to come to his office to help plan the party, then didn’t show.
“I told her, ‘I can’t stand you. You’re despicable.’ Did I curse at her or threaten to kill her? Not true — please. I would never say that.”
And he said he didn’t pay off anyone to get a table.
“What happened was I had arranged for Stevie Wonder to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ So at the end of the night, there were people at three or four tables who were not there for the party and I said, ‘I want you guys to attend.’ I picked up their tabs. Everybody thanked me. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
He’s not well-liked by the staff at Nobu, a Michelin two-star favorite where the omakase tasting menu can set you back $150 per person.
They said Rahr, who favors purple T-shirts and yellow Ray-Ban sunglasses, has often created problems and ordered them around.
“He spends a lot of money and it’s kind of like he thinks he owns this place,” said a waiter.
Rahr, who also refers to himself as the “No. 1 King of All Fun,” has run into trouble in the past.
In 2005, he was kicked out of a fund-raiser for Haiti in the Hamptons after forcing his way into photos with Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep.
“We thought he was a stalker,” one witness told The Post.
He also feuded with Pierce Brosnan, George Lopez and Tiger Woods, whom he called a “phony” and a “prick.”
Known to flaunt his charitable contributions — he’s the biggest donor to the Make-A-Wish Foundation — Rahr survived a skin-cancer scare and now maintains his bright orange complexion with self-tanning creams.
“I don’t mind being a buffoon,” he once said.
WHINE & DINE:Stewart Rahr, a “friend” of Kanye and Kim Kardashian, used his A-list connections to browbeat Nobu bosses.