Surprised there’s no reports here yet. Anyone been?
There’s a whole kinda goofy backstory behind the restaurant that goes something like this (it’s probably in the podcast you shared though I have not listened to it).
An entrepreneurial USC student passionate about food and art started hosting popup dinners around campus, serving tasting menus in a space adorned with fine art. It became a well known thing at USC. Post graduation, he took that ethos and turned it into something more permanent at Muse. It sounds like the kind of thing that would be a disaster, but…it’s not. It’s actually a really great restaurant.
I went on Valentine’s Day and had an absolutely wonderful meal. It was their first night back after being closed due to the fires for several weeks, but it would have been impossible to pick up on that if you didn’t already know. There were no obvious or even subtle deficiencies. They served the regular menu, not an overpriced tasting or prix fixe. Though, the place is quite expensive regardless. The food is mostly French with some California and international flair thrown in. Every single thing we ate was expertly cooked/baked, nicely plated, full of flavor, and most importantly delicious.
We ordered:
Brioche feuilletée with softened Bordier butter
Is this the same dish as regular brioche, or is laminated brioche a unique dish? I’m not sure, to be honest. Regardless, it was the best brioche I’ve ever had, by far. I would go as far as to say it may have been the best bread I’ve ever had in LA. Soft, buttery, flaky, and somehow “light” (perception wise, certainly not calorie wise). I would put this up there with the baguette with butter and pan drippings at Republique.
Hamachi with yuzu olive oil & Calabrian chili coulis
Here’s the Californian (and maybe even a bit of Japanese) influence. I sometimes hesitate to order crudo, as you get so little food for the price that I tend to feel ripped off. This was one of the best hamachi crudo I’ve ever eaten. The hamachi was perfectly sliced and nearly melted in my mouth. Not even a hint of fishiness. That makes a good hamachi crudo. But a great hamachi crudo requires more, and that came in the form of the…let’s call it a sauce - the olive oil chili concoction in which it sat was a revelation, elevating the dish well above a standard crudo.
Creste di gallo with basil pesto
If you know anything about me from my postings on here, it’s likely my deep love of pasta. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to order a noodle I had never heard of and thus certainly never eaten. Ordering pasta at a French restaurant might sound silly, but I was thinking of dinner at Jean-Georges in NYC many years back, my first ever 3* meal. There was a dish called springtime risotto (or something like that), which while the specifics eluded me this many years later, I recall being an absolute revelation of a pasta (adjacent) dish. The creste de gallo was a wondrous noodle which held sauce well and had a nice chew to it. To be honest, I did not ask if it the noodles were homemade or dried, but the dish was executed so well that it becomes a distinction without purpose. The sauce, thankfully, was more than a standard basil pesto. It had a somewhat silky emulsified nature to it, sort of similar to the pesto at factory kitchen. Good flavor, perfectly al dente noodles. It may not have quite reached the heights of that springtime risotto at Jean-Georges many years ago, but it was a delicious dish and I’m glad I ordered it.
Filet mignon with sauce Bordelaise
There’s not too much I can say about a relatively simple dish like this. Cooked perfectly medium rare, immensely tender, complete absence of gristle, lightly but nicely seasoned, and with a delicious sauce. It was one of the better filet mignons I’ve had, however, as such an easy dish to cook at home, I always wonder if the value is there ordering a filet out at a restaurant, especially as the filet at Muse is quite pricey. But, we wanted steak, and it was a great steak!
Dessert
They had an off menu Valentine’s Day special dessert, which I think was cherry and chocolate flavored and shaped like a heart. Although some of that could be wrong. Regardless, I do recall the dessert being extremely delicious.
Drinks
If remembering dessert was hard, remembering drinks is even harder. My girlfriend and I both ordered off the cocktail menu to start, and we both really liked our drinks, but I cannot offer much beyond that.
We were both full by the end of the meal, though a contributing factor to our fullness may have been that our reservation was at 5:30 PM (so a few hours closer to lunch than normal), the only time I could get from a last-minute cancellation. Portion size was generally moderate. The menu is unusually concise for an LA restaurant. It almost reads like a prix fixe menu, without it actually being a prix fixe - it’s entirely a la carte. I think they update the menu a little bit each season, but I would have to check in a few months (or find an older menu) to confirm.
My only complaint was that tables - at least on the side of the restaurant where we sat - are packed tight together. And I mean packed tight. This very well could be a dealbreaker for those who value their space and privacy. It’s a small restaurant though, so I don’t think the spacing between the tables is different anywhere else. There are a few rounded booths in the corners, so those could be ideal for anyone wanting a bit more space.
The restaurateur is an old man in a young kid’s body. He has the decorum and attention to service and the customer of Wolfgang Puck, walking around and chatting with genuine interest to every person at every table. The same level of hospitality expends to the rest of the staff. They’re all pretty young, and so for me it was almost confusing at first the way that everyone treats you - a bunch of young people acting with such poise and comport, but it’s actually just a genuine level of hospitality so rare these days especially in a causal city like LA. It might sound like some of this is a knock - it’s not - it’s just that nearly everything about the place surprised me, based on what I knew going in.
My immediate thoughts after dinner were:
- I can’t wait to come back
- The art was nice but I think I looked at the art for a grand total of 30 seconds on the way in and out. That’s not a knock on the art, I was just busy eating and conversing, and I also don’t know much about fine art anyways.
- This place deserves a Michelin star
Weeks later, thinking back on the meal and opening up the LA Michelin list, I stand by those initial thoughts.
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Looks amazing. Booked
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A classic example of what will soon be a non-starred “Michelin guide” restaurant. Good food, nothing to complain about. We wouldn’t go back considering location. Reminds me of Amour and Juliet.
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had the veal bonbons, hamachi, brioche feulelelellel, creste di gallo with basil pesto, lamb, branzino, and the eggplant with album jus (?) and pomme pave as sides.
all good to great.
eggplant with alium jus might’ve been the sleeper hit and the lamb was cuisson-ing as promised + a very delicious sauce.
also not running back, though perhaps it may have been a bit more energetic if mr. khayami had been there.
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I find a need to reply to this as my mouth watered when I simply saw the name appear on the board. I agree w/ everything @Loaxley said and then some. We luckily had Chef Fardad serving us which was an exceptional treat. Every bite was enticing, full bodied, and fantastic. We were blessed with the special risotto topped w/ arugula puree and spot prawn tartare that took me to the sandy coast of Sardinia. I was blown away at the level of professionalism of each staff member that greeted our table, clearly something lacking around much of the city. Given that I don’t stray much from my sushi outings, I can actually say I can’t wait to go back to this one…food.service.vibes.
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