Writing about new restaurants is in some ways quite like writing about new movies. For one thing, the activity under scrutiny usually lasts a couple of hours, and is sometimes way overrated. It's also similar because the business behind the movie or restaurant is often as interesting as the movie or restaurant itself, especially when either involves big financial risks. This certainly seems to be the case with Nobu Budapest, and not just because the person taking much of the financial risk is a film producer.

In case you missed the first part of the saga, in May of last year word came that the Kempinski Hotel Corvinus Budapest had signed a deal to host an outlet of the international super-luxury Japanese restaurant Nobu. After that came a long period of official silence, during which most observers probably just assumed the whole project had, for rather obvious reasons (the economy), been put on ice.

Fast-forward to last week and a conference room on the first floor of the hotel, where it was announced to great fanfare that the restaurant would be opening in September of this year. (There will be a "soft opening" on or around September 1, and then a proper gala opening featuring Nobu's most famous investor, Robert DeNiro.) And when I say "great fanfare" I am not kidding. There must have been 200 journalists jostling for position in the room as Nobuyuki "Nobu" Matsuhisa sat down for the press conference, flanked on one side by District V mayor Antal Rogán and Hungarian-American film producer Andy Vajna, who is apparently the lead investor and driving force behind the deal. It was actually reminiscent of the scenes in old Japanese monster movies in which the scientists tell the assembled media that the monster is headed towards Tokyo. (Or, since the journalists kept applauding the panelists and didn't ask a single question, reminiscent of the scenes when the scientists triumphantly announce that the monster has been defeated and is headed back into the Sea of Japan.)

Anyway, the whole thing is no doubt the biggest restaurant story that has hit Hungary in recent years, because it so neatly fits the "putting Budapest on the map of international cuisine" meme that seems to drive so much coverage of high-end dining in the local media. And even though many of the assembled journos were appalled to discover that they wouldn't be getting any freebie Nobu nibbles - the hack snacks were mostly the same sad salami sammies you get at any old pressconf - the coverage seemed uniformly upbeat, save for a scathingly satirical write-up on Index.hu, which was apparently pulled from the homepage after being overrun by comments from cheesed-off readers. Aside from this, the overall message was: "We have a Nobu, just like New York, Tokyo and Moscow! Woo-hoo!"

To their credit, my friends at the Kempinski invited me back for a follow-up interview the next day with "Nobu-san," even knowing that I would be likely to stray off-message. So after making some polite chit-chat about once living a few blocks from the first Nobu in New York, I got to what I recon is the meat of the story: How much demand can there possibly be for luxury Japanese food in a middle-income, landlocked country where even the Four Seasons found itself unable to keep a high-end Italian restaurant going?

His answer to this was to draw attention to what he said was the relatively small size of the place, which will have 81 seats in the dining room, compared to more than 200 in locations like London. He then went on to say they expected to do no more than 1.5 "covers" per seat at dinner, which is apparently a smaller ratio than at other Nobus around the world.

Matsuhisa is clearly as adept with the press as he is in the kitchen, and is an immediately likeable guy to boot. But I can't say I came away convinced. For one thing, if you multiply 81 seats by 1.5, you get 120, which may not sound like that many dinners, but in this case probably is. By coincidence, last night I dined at what is likely to be Nobu Budapest's biggest competitor - Kyoto, on nearby Roosevelt tér - and I counted 41 patrons in a room that seemed unusually busy. And dinners at Nobu will likely cost well more than 1.5 times the Ft 20,000 I paid for myself and my guest.

Meanwhile, the new restaurant will have a 56-seat bar/lounge where patrons will be able to eat, at least from a truncated bar menu. This not only means that the restaurant is in reality much larger than those 81 aforementioned seats, but that some folks who want a taste of Nobu (or to say they have had a taste) but don't want to blow the bank will just settle for a bite at the bar. And because of the connection with the hotel, the restaurant will probably have to be open for lunch regardless of whether it turns into a similar drain on the bread-and-butter dinner business - or whether just a few covers show. (Note, however, that Matsuhisa told me he didn't expect to operate at capacity for a while, since the restaurant would only be serving dinner and "actively managing the reservation book" to limit the number of covers over the first several months of operation.)

Moving on to the cost side of the equation, whatever is saved in lower rent compared to places like London or Rio may end up being spent on flown-in fish and other rare ingredients, which tend to cost a lot more here. Matsuhisa also said that the restaurant staff would include a dozen Nobu veterans brought in from other operations.

Another reason I fear the restaurant may have trouble on the business side is that the decision to open it doesn't seem to have been made purely based on its prospects as a stand-alone enterprise. At the press conference Vajna stressed that opening a Nobu in Budapest had long been a dream of his, and that he has been friends with Matsushisa for more than two decades. Meanwhile, the local mayor's presence was a physical reminder of the drive to make that part of District V - the so-called "Fashion Street" - work. I've also heard rumors that the investors didn't want to go ahead but that the contract with the hotel made it uneconomical to pull out.

All that said, for a number of reasons I wouldn't bet everything against Nobu succeeding. Matsushisa clearly seems to understand that the location and current business climate are challenging, and he and his team are utter experts. Another reason I wouldn't bet against it succeeding is that I want it to succeed, because even if it is a bomb as a business, as a restaurant it's destined to be an instant classic.