You can see evidence in the salads: a cucumber-avocado macedoine (a tip of the hat to Ken Frank of La Toque) a fashionably pale salad of Belgian endive, ground almonds and Stilton cheese (which works) and sauteed mushrooms with too much lettuce and a sour Champagne vinaigrette. The menu here is pretty interesting, and from it, like a geologist analyzing a piece of Devonian shale, you can trace the broad outlines of the pre-Spago California-cuisine era. At those times, even 17 garnishes may not be truly enough. If conversation stalls midway through dinner, the theory goes, you can always talk about the food. Muse is a popular first-date restaurant for Hollywood media workers. But when somebody from their party trips past on her way to the ladies’ room, it’s impossible to tell if it’s one of them or a hanger-on. A votive candle sputters at the table’s edge.Ī few yards away, behind the giant Borofsky, Dana Delaney and Winona Ryder are entertaining a dozen friends in a private dining area.
It’s dark in Muse, really dark, relieved only by a few lumens that dribble down from some dimly spotlit Mapplethorpe photographs and two potted palms that glow like spiky nimbuses at either end of the room. It’s still pretty hard to see the Muse sign, gray-on-gray, until they backlight it after dark. If you didn’t know where the place was-that blank, gray wall a block west of El Coyote where all those parking valets hung out-your subscription to L.A. Until a couple of years ago, Muse barely had a sign at all. You can’t photograph it when it’s full, because our celebrity customers wouldn’t like it. “You can’t photograph the restaurant when it’s empty,” said the owner, “because people will think it looks like a construction site. Opened at about the same time as Trumps and Spago, Muse may be the least talked-about trendy restaurant in town, and still one of the hardest to get into. It’s the kind of ‘80s place you didn’t think existed any more. Muse could be the restaurant that time forgot, a relic from the days of Sean ‘n’ Madonna (who frequented the joint), and a shrine to the forgotten glories of paint-by-numbers California cuisine: carrot lasagnetta ahi ceviche duck egg rolls with Thai tea syrup and pineapple frappe.
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