Muse’s Modern French Cuisine Is Made With Love

By Laurel Busby

News & Information Editor

At 24 years old, Fardad Khayami is likely the youngest business owner in the Canyon.

His inspiration is his late grandfather, who taught him to cook, who urged him to stretch himself, and who inspired many of the recipes that he prepares at Muse restaurant.

Fardad Khayami at Muse restaurant

“He was my role model,” Khayami said. “My grandfather loved to cook, … and I take the dishes he used to make and reinvent them with a modern lens.”

Khayami’s grandfather prepared an array of treats, including food inspired both by his Persian heritage and his love of Italian and French cuisine. The latter became some of his grandson’s particular favorites, especially when, as a young teen, he began working in a French restaurant in his childhood home of London, England.

A little later, when Khayami was 16 years old, his grandfather moved to Los Angeles due to health problems that caused him to desire a warmer climate. In order to be near him again, Khayami applied to USC, where he was luckily accepted, and, in 2018, he moved to Los Angeles to study finance and economics.

During their subsequent conversations, his grandfather regularly asked him what he was doing outside of class, and the question inspired Khayami.

“I thought, ‘Why don’t I start a little restaurant in my dorm room?’” he recalled. So, he and his roommates created “a pop-up restaurant very much inspired by the food I loved, and it became bigger and bigger and bigger every week.”

One roommate built a bar in the living room, and a bedroom became a dining room. Khayami was the chef, and two nights a week, they served up to 30 customers a night. Three years later at his 2022 graduation, Khayami had prepared 3,000 meals and had accumulated a waiting list of 6,000 people who wanted a chance to eat there.

Just as with Muse, the cuisine was modern French, which is a healthier twist on traditional French cooking that uses less cream and butter, while retaining the emphasis on fresh, high-quality ingredients.

Upon leaving USC, Khayami originally intended to work in finance or investment, but he found that he craved the joys that restaurant work provided.

“I love nourishing people,” he said. “I love serving them. I love the excitement that comes with restaurants…. There’s something very tactile about getting an ingredient, cutting it, cooking it, putting it on the plate, giving it to the guest, and seeing that dish nourish them. There’s something really beautiful about doing that, and I take great pleasure from doing that.”

Khayami began considering a spot to open his restaurant, and the Canyon called to him.

“When I visited after graduation, I said, ‘This is where we need to open our restaurant,’” Khayami said. “Everyone in the community is so kind. Everyone is so lovely. When a space became available, I snapped it up.”

In February last year, he began renovating the location at 108 W. Channel Rd., and in September, Muse opened. By November, the restaurant was fully booked, Khayami said. Then, two months later, the Palisades Fire came.

“Seeing all this destruction in such a beautiful community … was very painful for me and all of my employees,” Khayami said. “So many people that we served, that we knew, that in a short period of time became our good friends and patrons and customers, lost their homes.”

He and his workers evacuated that morning, and they carted off the restaurant’s varied ingredients with them. Since the fresh items would only last for a short time and the fire was not going to dissipate soon, he and his staff, who he continued to pay regular wages, offered to prepare meals for the firefighters.

“We turned from being a fine dining establishment in this beautiful space to catering from my apartment,” Khayami said.

As the days passed, other people also began to donate prepared food, and Khayami’s lunches and dinners were no longer needed by the first responders. However, when he asked if anything else was needed, he was told, “No one is coming at 4 a.m. to make us breakfast.”

Fardad Khayami bringing breakfast burritos to the National Guard in January.

In order to fill that need, Khayami and his employees made 500 burritos each morning for the rest of January. Afterwards, in early February, they created a pop-up restaurant in Santa Monica, then, on Valentine’s Day, Muse reopened.

Khayami, who became one of the charter members of the new Canyon Business Association, which is working to help local businesses recover from the fire, has seen customers slowly return, although patronage hasn’t reached pre-fire levels yet.

“Every week is getting better,” Khayami said. “It’s so tragic what happened. We hope and pray that the lovely people who live in the Palisades … can come back to continue to live the lives they should be living.”

As the community recovers, one favorite entree that continually lures customers to Muse is the rack of lamb ‘à la Provençal’ with sauce Solferino & pea purée, which offers a herb crust on the Texel breed of lamb known for its “very clean flavor and low intramuscular fat,” Khayami said.

His younger brother, Nikdad, Muse’s pastry chef, also makes a well-loved starter, brioche feuilletée, which is a marriage of a brioche and a croissant that is crunchy on the outside and soft and warm on the inside.

“Most people say it’s the best bread they have ever had in their lives,” Khayami said.

Each week, Muse offers one or two new items on the menu, depending on what is in season at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, where they buy their produce, Khayami said. The staff also works to create a welcoming environment.

“It’s a restaurant that cherishes serving people, making them happy, bringing them together, and creating a fun time for them,” he said.

While his grandfather died long before he had the chance to sample Muse’s cuisine, “I have no doubt he would have loved to have dined at the restaurant,” Khayami said. “He was a lovely, beautiful, generous man, but he also … had very high standards and expectations for everything. So I’m sure that while he would have loved it, he’d also have had multiple ideas about how we could make it all better. I wish we had the opportunity to hear them.”

Muse is open Wednesday through Sunday from 5 to 10 p.m. Call (424) 238-5107 after 2:30 p.m. to make reservations or visit the website: musesantamonica.com.