660: Muse Is a Los Angeles Restaurant Scene Secret with Fardad Khayami

27:21When you're not in Santa Monica at your restaurant working, where are you dining out right now? I'll give you three restaurants that I'm loving right now that I frequent. One's Dunsmore. It's quite the drive. It's about an hour from where we are in Santa Monica. It's about a two-hour drive to get there. But what Brian's doing there is just excellent. I love his food. I love his cooking. I love him as well. He's a great man, a great chef. He's got a great team. A lot of restaurants that you go to today. When I go to Dunsmore, I feel that everybody in that restaurant really cares about the restaurant, which is becoming harder and harder to find with the restaurants that you go, not in LA, but around the world.

28:01So I love being at Don's Moor. I love River. Oh, yeah. I'm at Bikini. Have you been? I have been. You have been. So River is about a five-minute drive from the restaurant, 10-minute drive from the restaurant. And they're open. They close their kitchen at like 11, 11.15. So if we send out food early and I'm able to get away from the restaurant, if I'm really hungry and I haven't eaten something at the restaurant, Then I'll pop over to the river for some hand rolls and some grilled vegetables. It's gorgeous. I also really love Funky. I really love Funky. A lot of their team come to our restaurants, and when I go there, they take great care of us.

28:37I'm having Evan in the studio later this week. Fantastic. He's a lovely man. He's a lovely, lovely man. Great chef. Great team, too. It's front of house, back of house, excellent. His team has stayed the same since the opening. It's really lovely. The wine director, Emanuele, they just everyone there is top-notch. I love that. Well, take me back to growing up. I want to hear about your experience with restaurants because I feel like with opening Muse at such a young age, you clearly at an early age understood what made a great restaurant. So what were some of the restaurants in your life growing up?

29:12Well, first of all, you're very kind for that compliment. Thank you for the compliment. It's true. It's really true. But thank you. my first experience with food and hospitality was not in restaurants but but with my grandfather my grandfather was was quite the passionate chef he was a lovely man and he loved to just go buy lovely ingredients cook all day and then serve his family and we go to his house every sunday for lunch this is in london in london yes in london we grew up we grew up in london so that was the first time that I recognized what food, the effect that food had on me and around the other people on the table in terms of bringing people together, nourishing them and making them feel happy, you know, making them feel loved through the service, through the serving, through my grandfather who was, you know, in his 70s and such, he was an older man, but the way that he would get off with his chair and have so much power, I'd see him have the most energy, the most energy for life when he was serving you know when he was we were persians we're making beautiful stews and and so on a lot of very a lot of family family recipes which he's passed down on to me now but but um you know having him you know scoop rice on my plate put stew on my plate telling me how i should eat the stew that he's prepared that day it's through love and hospitality that that one of those ways in life that you can really feel loved and so that was my first experience with hospitality growing up and then I worked in restaurants, just local restaurants here and there.

30:40I got the chance to go to some really lovely restaurants growing up, you know, particularly in one restaurant that, one individual in a restaurant that is one of my largest inspirations is a beautiful gentleman called Diego Masiaga, who was the general manager of the Watersiden, which is a lovely three Michelin star restaurant in Bray, very, very, very classic French restaurant from the Rue Brothers. and the way that Diego would command, the food there was excellent, but what really made it special was Diego. So this was, I would say, my first time saying, wow, that love my grandfather showed me, watching the way that Diego was on the floor, the way he would conduct the servers, the way he would touch each table, the way he would do table-side presentations, it made me realize that service is service, but there's this hospitality thing that you can replicate in a restaurant.

31:32You can show your guests that you love them, that you're here to take care of them and that you can touch them and make them feel loved and make them feel cared for, which is, you know, I'm going to say, I say every other sentence I say loved or cared for. And it's true. It's what's at the very core of what we do at Muse and what our goal is at Muse. So yeah, my grandfather, Diego, working in restaurants, you know, obviously you learn how things operate. You learn what works, what doesn't work well, what a good chef is, what a not good chef is. And then obviously we started a little, based on all those experiences, I stodged at some really lovely restaurants while I was in college.

32:12I know that you - I started a little pop-up restaurant in my dorm room. We'll get to that, the pop-up at USC, which was wildly successful. So let's talk about those stages before we get to the pop-up in USC, which was a huge success and led to Muse. What were the stages like? And did you have any formal culinary training or were you just like jumping in? No formal culinary training, just working at the local pub in the Italian restaurant. And then the stages, you know, the stage that I loved the most, that affected me the most was I staged at 1917, which is a lovely restaurant in the Cheval Blanc in Corchevel.

32:48And I was in charge of like one component on one dish, which was the first dish to go out. Incredible. And oh my Lord, the amount of care and attention and professionalism, but also the fun too, you know, the type of hospitality at that restaurant. That's what made me realize alongside with Diego that this can be fun. Even though it's fine dining, even though we were very serious about our food, very serious about our service, we can still have a good time doing it. We don't have to be screaming at each other. The chefs are not screaming at each other. It was organized. It was calm, but it was also fun.

33:22And there was this camaraderie that was not, that was, you know, when you're growing up and you're thinking, you know, you're working in restaurants and you see things and you read certain books, you get scared of what the industry might be. But at least the places that I worked, that I've experienced, they're not like that. You know, it's the, it was with compassion. It's refreshing to hear somebody who's under 30, who now has a restaurant and is creating a culture within Muse, who wasn't trained in the old way. Because we talk about it on the show a lot. The old way, the brigade system, the screaming, you have to pay your dues.

33:59A lot of chefs come on the show and often wax nostalgic about that time. And fair enough. It certainly would have benefit. Discipline. Discipline is something that's very important. and sometimes you might go to a restaurant, you might be sitting at a counter of a restaurant and see a lack of discipline, which I don't think is a positive, but it's a balance, it's a balance. You need organization, you need discipline, you need standards that need to be maintained, but it doesn't need to be at the cost of humanity. Right, it doesn't need to be a culture of fear. Right, exactly. You said it perfectly, exactly.

34:32And you've created, you were raised in an era where that was unacceptable in some ways. I'm sure there's plenty of restaurants, obviously, in the three Michelin star system that have people throwing knives around. But for the most part, that tendency is left. And you now, being a very young restaurateur and chef, you haven't been trained in that way. And I would hope that more folks are trained that way. I love what you said about fear. It's something that, you know, one of the things that being a restaurateur, being a chef and having employees, one thing that I've been thinking about more and more each day is what type of leader do I want to be?

35:10What sort of, you know, owner of a business do I want to be? And you said it perfectly. I want each of my employees, all of our suppliers, every third party that we work with and so on, to come to work every single day, not with fear, but with love. With love. With love for doing a good job. Not because they're scaled, they'll be fired or so on. because they want to do a good job for the business because they believe in the business and they love their job working there. And if you do that while maintaining high standards and discipline, then everyone gives not 100%, 110 % or 20%. And you get more out of your people.

35:44They go out of their way to add value to the business. Let's push forward to USC. So you're a student there. You're obviously interested in food, but you're doing studies. Something happens, and I want to hear the story, but you start cooking for your roommates and you start cooking these pop-ups and the pop-ups are becoming popular. And from my reporting, I think Rezzy had a terrific article about you, about you, you grew to 6 ,000 on your wait list to get in. Fardad, what was, what, what was going on with this pop-up? You know, it sounds really unique. There was no planning. It was just every single day.

36:21It was passion. It was passion. We loved it. Started very small. Again, it was some of the best things in life are not planned. Some of the best things in life, they just unravel through spontaneity. And that's exactly what this was. So I moved here for USC, for university. When I was 16, my grandfather, he moved to Los Angeles and he didn't have much family in LA. And he was my, again, my role model, my idol, not only for food, but in all walks of life. So I decided to study the SATs, I got into USC and I would continue to have dinner at his house, just him and I now, not the rest of the family, but just him and I would have dinner.

36:59And he'd cook for me. And he sadly passed during my sophomore year. And it was then where, you know, he wasn't cooking for me, but to sort of keep his legacy, I decided I was going to cook for my roommates. And we did it every Sunday night and I would cook for them. I'd get some ingredients. And one night some friends came over. They had some of the leftovers that came after dinner. They said, can we come next week for actual dinner? I said, sure, of course. So they came the next week. and then next week they brought friends and then their friends brought friends and then their friends brought friends and all of a sudden I've got two Trader Joe's bags walking into my dorm room apartment.

37:31I basically had a little camp stove. This is literally a dorm room. Oh, this is a dorm room, yes. At the beginning, eventually we were serving some people we needed to get a bigger apartment by our senior year. But our sophomore year, I tried to open the door for a dorm room but I couldn't because there were so many people blocking the door waiting to be fed and then I sort of looked around and it's all these people enjoying our food. Then I looked at my bank account. And I'm like, wow, we're paying a lot of money cooking for these people. Because you weren't charging. You were just doing for fun.

37:57Not that. It was like three weeks, four weeks. We were, you know, grocery bill was like$100,$150. I was like, I got to start charging these people. This is not sustainable. So, okay,$5 for everybody. And then we had to start taking reservations because we couldn't do like 100 covers in a room like this big at once. So we started taking reservations. We started charging. Or your dorm room. Yes. You started taking reservations. Yeah, we started taking reservations. So you were doing like multiple turns? We were doing one turn. It was one seating. Guests would come in. They'd have some. This wasn't exactly a sanctioned restaurant.

38:33Take it to the menu. Yeah, what were they having? It was anything we wanted to cook across cuisines. There was no rules. No rules at all. It was wake up. We were full-time students at the time. So it was whatever time in between classes, run to the market, run here, run to the butcher shop, whatever we could get our hands on, whatever we wanted to cook, whatever my roommates that I lived with my senior year, they were not part of the museum. So whatever leftovers they had in the fridge, it was basically anything we put together. I had a cookbook across cuisines, and it could be more French, it could be more Asian.

39:10We did a Persian night. We did an Indian. I love Indian food, great Indian food in London. So we did a lot of Indian nights. It was basically anything that we wanted to cook, anything we wanted to serve, we served. Guests would come in, they'd have a couple cocktails, and we'd do dinner and then turn into a bit of a party afterwards. It was quite a little after party. It was fun. So are we talking like, is this like 10 people in your dorm room? No. So it was 30 guests twice a week. 30 guests. So we're doing 60 guests a week. So it was like an apartment style. You had a little more room. It's not like the single-seaters.

39:36Well, I'll show you photos. But essentially, by our senior year, we said, let's invest a little bit in this. So we got a little off-campus apartment, about a five-minute walk from USC. We converted our bedrooms into the dining room. We'd take our mattresses out every single night. So cool. Leave them on the side of the road, which wasn't a good idea because one night we came and there was a homeless person sleeping on a mattress. This is so good. Life at LA restaurants right there. This was, that was, it was, again, to answer your question, what was it like? It was just, we were full-time students doing this every single night.

40:09It was fun. It was exciting. We're making money. I was able to apply what I was learning in class to the business. I studied business with accounting and finance and economics, so microeconomics. So I was able to apply what I learned in class. Let's make a pricing model. Let's make our balance sheet, and this is what this is, and that's what unearned revenue is. You had a P &L going on. Oh, 100%. For a museum, which is the pop-up. So how did you skirt the DOH, the Department of Health? Was it just like you were hoping that no one would snitch on you? I have no comments. Okay, fair enough. I think that's actually good.

40:47We had a, I don't know if anybody on the bus, but we had a property manager, lovely man. It was student housing where we live, but we were doing this. But Hugo, he's like, you built a bar, you built a fake wine wall that leads into your bedrooms. What are you guys doing? Thankfully, he was a fan of tequila. So a bottle of tequila once a month. And that was our permanent piece. I shouldn't say that. No, you can say that. I think enough time has passed and it was all done in goodwill and nobody died. Nobody died that you know of from eating. I don't want to drink our own Kool-Aid too much. But the reason we did it was, one, it was nice to have, you know, we needed to help pay rent and our living expenses.

41:28Two, I did want to apply what I was learning in class to the business. And then the third thing was connecting people. You know, in college, what I found was you meet a lot of people, but not very genuine relationships, not very genuine connections. And we wanted to create a space where you could come and really get to know somebody. And USC is such a great school, such a diverse school with so many different majors, so many international students, some people from so many different lives, starting so many fun projects, having people come to space and meeting and connecting. And there's so many partnerships, so many friendships, so many relationships, be it business, friendship or love that's formed in our little dorm room.

42:10So it was an amazing thing for us, but also I think it added, I do think it added value to being a student at that time. Of course, and you were building towards a greater goal. What year are we talking about? When was museum running? I graduated May of 2022. Amazing. I started at USC in August of 2018. This is amazing. So you're here, this is like a little bit, this is during the pandemic. So you're kind of like getting people in person together when it's cool to do that. So 22, you wrapped Museum. And I mean, Fardot, is it just right away, you're like, I need to open a restaurant in Los Angeles?

42:48By the time, on graduation day, yes. Go back eight months and I was making that decision. So I had a full-time offer to join. I'd interned in finance throughout my time at university. And I was very lucky to secure a full-time offer. I had a great company and a great firm. Wow. But I had a really good relationship with my boss, with my managing director there. So you worked there? I worked there the summer of my junior year, the summer before my senior year. I worked there. And by the end of my internship, I got a full-time offer to work there. Here in Los Angeles you were working? In London. London, yeah.

43:23In London. I was going to go back home. Yeah. I was going to go back home. So I got very close with actually the owner of that business who was a wonderful man, Mike. And Mike and I, we would call all the time during my senior year with all of his staff. He's very hands-on and he cares about his people. He's a big inspiration for me. And I was talking to Mike and I was telling Mike, I'm running this business. I'm excited to come work for you. And Mike said, well, why don't you start your own business? Why don't you think about it? think about it i thought you don't want me to work yeah are you trying to are you trying to rescind your your offer is that you know he said no i think what's best and then and then you know i spoke to my to my friends at school and then i had a conversation with my father and sort of you know what he said is you're going to learn way more doing this running your own business than you did at four years of business school and more than you would any and anything else and i spoke to mike and he said look if it doesn't work out you've got a desk here that's so incredible shout Shout out to Mike.

44:25He's a lovely man. What a great... He's a big mentor to me. And we still speak on the... We still meet once... At least three times a year, we still meet. Okay. Is he an investor? No, he's not an investor. You didn't get him on that, right? He's not an investor, but I'm very lucky. Mike, alongside a couple of people, I'm very lucky to have great mentors in and outside of the food business. All right. So you find a space, right? Like, let's jump ahead. You find this space in Santa Monica to open Muse. Like, what's building up to finding that space and saying, this is my restaurant? The landlord's saying, how old are you?

44:59Absolutely not, I'm giving you our space. So, you know, when I graduated, I was very naive. I had no idea about zoning. I had no idea about liquor license, liquor regulation in California, you know, none of that. So it was a big learning curve, big learning. A couple of months after university was reading building codes, calling the Department of Building and Safety and just seeing, you know, what's a conditional use permit? How do you change use on a property? You know, sort of like, what's the criteria that we need? How's it gonna be possible to open a restaurant? So all of that, I looked at maybe 90 spaces, put offers on 20.

45:36Dang. 19 said, absolutely not. One said, absolutely not. But I fell in love with the space and I was harassing the landlord's representative every single week. So the space where we are. So that became available. It was a former restaurant. Steakhouse, right? It was a steakhouse. Anyone who's opened a restaurant knows that you want to take over a space that was previously a restaurant. What's so expensive about opening a restaurant is all the MEP, the mechanical, the engineering, the electrical, the plumbing. So we were very lucky to find this space. It was a former restaurant. There was no key money, which is very, very rare.

46:11And just a lease and a landlord, lovely landlord, who is our landlord now, but who was asking very reasonable rent. The economics were right. Everything was right about the building. I love the location. When I was driving to the restaurant for the first time, anyone who's from Los Angeles knows that if you're driving to West Channel or up to connect PCH via West Channel to go to Malibu, when you drive down San Vicente, you take the ride on 7th Street, you see the mountains ahead of you, then it curves around, you see the ocean with all the palm trees, you fall in love. And then you walk around the area and everyone is so kind, everyone is so nice.

46:43You feel the palaces that church beautiful people, which made the fires even more painful. But with all the space, put an offer on it, landlord said though but i kept on harassing them i said i need this space i'll give you an extra month of security to deposit whatever you know you need a space six months go by they're still like no it's like the landlord's representative blocked my phone number because then i used my my brother's phone number nice that's the way david's phone number david david was the bartender of museum and he he was there for the first few months of the restaurant helping me helping me open it and uh so finally he goes look i'll give you five minute phone call the landlord call the landlord and then we get a breakfast and then we get a lunch and then i cook for her and then eventually she says you know what we can negotiate a lease that's incredible yes for her yes was that your insistence to cook for her her grandfather bought that property in the 20s yeah she grew up on west channel road she wanted somebody who's going to take care of her space economics were not it was she was asking very reasonable rent the economics were very fair she wasn't asking for double the renter or so on.

47:44She was very fair. She wanted to find someone who was going to give a love to the space. And when she saw a 22-year-old, she thought this was going to be something crazy. But after we sat down, she realized that we were going to give more love to this space and anyone else. And that's what she cared about. And West Channel Road, just to set it up in Santa Monica, like I drove down last night. I made that turn myself. And it's one of the truly most stunning backdrops you can have for a restaurant in Los Angeles, because you've got the ocean there you've got the mountains and you're just the beach you're tucked down there and it leads to my question when you're when you're opening in this extremely vibey neighborhood do you feel like pressure to live up to the backdrop or is it the opposite you feel you have an opportunity to do a cool restaurant with it like an outrageously cool and unique background museum at usc was about three things for me at its core you know lots of change from museum at usc to muse but at its core was about three things it was about number one connecting people you know creating a space where people can come connect whether it be meet new people or even just with the people that you're with that you're with number two to show off beautiful things beautiful products that we have in california beautiful food beautiful wine great cocktails great art we had rotating art exhibitions at museum of students of the fellow students and number three make people feel loved so I knew that no matter what we were going to do at the space as we need to do those two things those are the core that's the fundamental of what we do it's a fundamental the restaurant and I'd worked in fine dining I want to do some sign dining I also thought that the demographics of the Palisades there's not a lot of fine dining French restaurants in the city in Los Angeles there's not so much you've got a lot of bistros a lot of brasseries but you don't have sort of a gastronomic French restaurant in LA so my plan was we're going to do gastronomic French restaurant Palisades is I thought the demographic of the Palisades would support the average check that would you know would be of that concept so and it's what I love it's what I love it's what's in my heart I love fine dining I love being pampered when I'm in a restaurant I love beautifully prepared food that's got great preparation great ingredients so it's it just all clicked it clicked I thought it worked for the space it's exactly what I love and And so the vision of Muse came from that.

50:08Yeah. Well, talk about what was happening at Muse before January 2025. What was the opening period like just before we get to the fires? I want to talk about the pre-fires. Right. So the building of the restaurant was just incredible. I was blessed. And you're going to say this a lot because I really do. I really do. Thank God. I was blessed with an amazing team. Mark Ange, who designed the restaurant with me, our architect Galileo. Joseph Moore and Eli who were on the construction side did a fantastic job wasn't without its challenges building a restaurant and even if it's an existing space going through all the hoops with the health department building safety the alcoholic beverage control is not a straightforward path it's an up and down path so that was a thrilling journey but quite an exhausting journey and then became the actual opening of the restaurant when did you open exactly?

50:59well technically we opened in the middle of August but we were not very busy our first few weeks. So I say we opened at the beginning of September is when people started to actually come. I mean, August is tough in any city. August is tough. People are traveling, of course. You had some one-cover nights, maybe zero covers. Fair. Not that bad, but it was, oh, you know, we've poured so much love into this. We're all the people. But we knew, we believed in the vision of what we were doing and so we powered through. But I say we opened, for the record, I said we opened September 2nd. I'm reading. We're going to do our one-year anniversary on September 2nd.

51:39You're going to call it September. You know what? We were closed for a month before, so I actually do October 2nd. But it was crazy how fast we fell over the community. It was amazing how much the community embraced us. So like I said, we weren't very busy when we first opened. The first few weeks, we weren't very busy. September was madly busy. The first half of October was getting there, but still not, you know. Still not what we want it to be, but by the middle of October, word of mouth spread. Yes. And we were fully booked every single night for the second half of October, November, December.

52:14It was amazing. It's 35 seats around? About 33 seats. 33, yeah. 33 seats. So, you know, fully booked for us means for five o 'clock. Five o 'clock is our first reservation. 930 is our last reservation. Fully booked means two turns on everything. And our two tops get turned three times. Yeah. Amazing. So that's fully booked. That's great. That's fully booked for us. And we were fully booked every night in November, every night in December. And it was just amazing. It was amazing. And we were serving the Palisades. The majority of our guests were people from the Palisades. And we had so many regulars just in three months to get all this love.

52:48It was amazing. And what I was the most, and I'm sure we'll talk about this more about the fires. What I loved the most was I was blessed about the people I had around me. Our general manager, Matthew. you are my executive chef jason and our sous chef brandon our pastry chef kirsten we had really built an incredible core team and that's it was that's what i was the most proud of yeah that's what i was the most thankful for the most surprised about was the management team but also particularly in the front of house pre-fires our front of house team hasn't changed since uh october yeah midway for october maybe there's been two people that that are not there since since one actually one sorry only there's only been one person that's not working for us in front of house since october that's going through a disaster of the fires and we're closed for a month.

53:33So I was blessed and so lucky and fortunate for the people I had around me. So things are moving along in a great way. I mean, this is, and really the media is just starting to take interest. You know, there's a little bit on Eater and I think, you know, the scouts for, you know, food and wine are out there maybe poking around a little bit. Yes. We were very blessed to have Mark who helped me build, who designed the restaurant with me. His wife, Hanan, is a lovely lady. She helped us with the PR a little bit at the beginning, but we didn't really have, and she did a great job and was very kind to offer to help us.

54:06But it wasn't a big PR push. No. We relied really on word of mouth and the locals of the Palisades. I'm reading Juniperon's memoir, which is out this fall. And Montrachet, when it opened downtown in Tribeca, it was similar. It's just like no one showed up the first three weeks and then, or two or three weeks. it's just the way restaurants are built with this kind of caliber where you really want word of mouth and you really want neighborhood people there so let's go to that that those days in january the fires happen i just want you to take us through just your own experience with that week and what the fallout was because i i know this is hard i mean a lot of people lost their homes and we're talking about food here.

54:52So like, you know, luckily it seemed like there wasn't widespread injury in the Palisades and people got out, but I don't want to - For the most part. For the most part. A few lost their lives. But again, like I said, we felt very connected to the Palisades. Within three months, they gave us so much love and to see a vibrant, beautiful community get destroyed in a blink of an eye within 24 hours. People's lives changed. It's insane. Before I go on to Muse and us, just to touch on just the devastation. So we ended up cooking for the fire department and meeting some of the firefighters. One of the most poignant things that I heard was obviously talking to all the guests, but this one firefighter who was deployed, he just happened to be from the Palisades.

55:44He went to the elementary school in the Palisades. And he happened to be there to watch it burn down. He was part of the task. I was meant to be there putting out that fire that was burning down the school. And what he said to me was something I'll never forget with my life. He said, I watched all my childhood memories vanish before my eyes. And I was there with my crew, with our fire trucks. We were giving it our all. but no matter what we did, nature kept pushing us back and took my childhood memories in its way. And yeah, I get emotional talking about it now because it's just devastating. But I really do get emotional.

56:23It's really, really sad. But anyways, so yeah, from January, probably the most challenging month of my life from so far, hopefully ever, from January 7th to when we reopened on Valentine's Day on the 14th, definitely the most challenging period of my of my life um so so far we're closed on mondays and tuesdays the fire started on january 7th which was a tuesday and so the fire's in my window and i thought what's going on again when you see when you see when you see i mean that's in the direction of the restaurant like god i hope we didn't leave the oven on or something yeah yeah yeah so i looked at the look at the cctv of the restaurant everything's fine our pastry team gets into the restaurant on tuesday to prepare for the week to get a head start they're all they're all there and And I call Kirsten, like, is everything okay?

57:12Kirsten was our pastry sous chef, my brother's sous chef. And she's like, oh, fine, just rolling out the brioche, just preparing the brioche for the week. Great, okay, lovely. Then I switch on the news, and obviously, my God, and I look even closer. I see fires on the mountains from my window. It was insane. So we drive over to the restaurant. We're like, we know we're not going to open anytime soon. So we start evacuating all the food. We get the evacuation notice. You've got to leave the area, get out of the area. This is, we were in the, our restaurant was deep within the, you, this, this might not be here tomorrow zone.

57:45Get, get out of here. So we were evacuating all the food and, and, and all the art. I was going to say, I mean, the food is one thing, but the art in your face. We were evacuating, yeah, so we were all the art, all the food, and you just see all the fire trucks going by. And, and, um, in that moment we saw, well, we've got all this food. Our restaurant might burn down, but, but at the very least, all this food is going to go off. we got to do something with it so we got the thankfully we had David who was as I said was making the cocktails at museum and was by my side the entire way until we opened the restaurant now no longer at the restaurant but pursuing other careers but David had the contact of a fire chief so we got in to talk with that fire chief and said do you guys have food like do you you guys want filet mignon for dinner?

58:33He goes, yeah, we'd love filet mignon for dinner. So we cooked them dinner. And then the next day - In the restaurant, you could still cook there. No, no, we lost power. Yeah. We lost power. So at my apartment. Yeah. Thankfully, like I said, we were fully booked November, December. Thank God. We had a very financially successful November, December. Without that, I'm not sure if we would have gotten through the month of January, but we were able to keep all of our staff on our payroll. Amazing. To keep them all full time through January. The first thing I did is send an email to them. At least, I don't know if the restaurant is going to burn down, but no matter what happens, you're all Muse employees until the end of January, no matter what.

59:10But we're all going to come to my apartment. I'm going to cook for the fire department because we've got food that's going to go off and they need food. Because imagine mobilizing thousands of men on the federal, state and city level. How are you going to feed them all? So we started feeding, cooking, delivering the food. We had to smuggle our way through the checkpoints because that area was in the factory. Well, you were like, I'm bringing filet for the front line. Exactly. You guys got to let me through. Exactly. So we cooked for them. That was the Wednesday, the Thursday, the Friday. By the Saturday, we saw that they had established other means of getting food.

59:43They got food trucks there. The city did an amazing job getting food and resources to them. That Wednesday, they were basically living off granola bars and Gatorade, at least to what I saw. And then by the Saturday, they had food trucks coming in. They did a really great job mobilizing resources there on the food side. and then I went to the fire chief, this lovely Captain Kitahats on it and I said to him so sees that you got other people doing lunch and dinner and we're in back of my room and so we're also running out of all the food, we've cooked for all the food that we've had at the restaurant sees that you guys have other means of is there anything else that you guys need?

1:00:17and he goes, you're right, we have other people making us food and lunch and he goes, but since you ask no one's coming at four in the morning making us breakfast, why don't you do it? He's got smoke on his face. I can see he just came from finding a fire. You can't say no to that. He's got ash on his face. He's got holes in his jacket from the embers of the fire that have burned. You can't say no. All right, team, we're making their breakfast burritos every morning, 500. And then it was too much. We were doing it out of my apartment, so making them, delivering them every single morning at 4 in the morning.

1:00:49And to help get up, they needed 500. To get up to that 500, we had two other restaurants help us out, particularly Mattia Degazi and the Gucci Asteria team in Beverly Hills did a phenomenal job helping us out making food for them for their breakfast but but that was that was January but then we had a we had a we had a um so we did that for January and then we had an itch but an itch to reopen yeah and we we we kept the staff you also needed to like survive well we needed to survive so obviously we we had a little GoFundMe that helped us helped us with the expenses so was that just Was it straight donations or were they future meals for the good party?

1:01:24It was future meals, future meals for the fire department. We raised, yeah, to help us with that operation of cooking, delivering the food and so on. All the packaging. But, you know, so by that Saturday, the fire had been contained, at least on the, I mean, you know, one gush of Winona Direction. I feel bad saying this, but, you know, one gush of Winona Direction would have been finished. where West Channel Road, all the restaurants and businesses on our street, all the homes, and maybe even on Entrada and so on, it would have been finished. It would have been finished. That gush of wind blew north.

1:02:02So unfortunately, the businesses and the homes north of the epicenter, they're the ones that burned down and not West Channel Road. But by that Sunday, we knew that it was contained on our site and the restaurant wasn't going to burn down. And we knew that one day we're going to reopen. We're going to reopen one day. We didn't know when. By the middle of January, we got power back. By January 20th, around the 21st, I think, my dates might not be completely right, but around the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, we got the clear. We were no longer in the evacuation zone. But the only thing we didn't have was water.

1:02:39And my team, as I said, we kept them on the payroll for January, of course. We were monitoring our cash flow and we had a runway that we were approaching the end of, of course but also our team even though we're something although we're paying them 40 hour week you know 40 hour weeks still you know we're talking about the food business the majority of their of their of their take-home pay comes from tips now in california you still got to pay your your your employees minimum wage unlike other states where you can pay them two dollars an hour and so you make up the rest of tips in california you you pay them minimum wage uh around$18 an hour.

1:03:17So we're paying that. But again, particularly the front of house, the majority of them, they get their take-on pay from tips, from gratuities. And even though we're paying them, there's still some of them seeing a 50 % decrease in their take-on pay. And that's not sustainable for them. And just doing this is not sustainable for us. So we did a pop-up at the San Vicente Bungalows in Santa Monica. Mr. Klein was so kind to give us a space in his home and space in his club. And they share half of their kitchen with us and an excellent job that my team did. I mean, I am so proud of them. He gave us a space not so much bigger than this, maybe double the size of this.

1:03:53It was their library in his private club. That's great. Every single night, we converted that library into a restaurant. We took over half of their kitchen and we call new communication system, a whole new firing system, a whole new kitchen. We had to adapt a lot of things to their kitchen. And we did two weeks of amazing. We were able to bring in revenue. So it's like money coming in, keeping the team sharp. Keeping the team sharp. But still, we wanted to get back to Muse. Of course. And we were not in evacuation zone. We didn't have power, but we had power. We were not in evacuation zone. We had power, but we didn't have water.

1:04:25And so when that happened, when we got power out of evacuation zone back around the 21st of January, I was like, okay, we don't have water. The city wasn't able to establish clear guidelines on when water would be back, which makes planning for business quite difficult. So if you don't know if it's going to be days, weeks, months, or years, there was a law in California passed after the Paradise Fires in 2018 that when a community burns down, you've got to switch off the water supply until you can test that it's uncontaminated. And DWP were being incredibly thorough, doing an amazing job, making sure that the water was clean.

1:05:04But there was uncertainty. They didn't know when the water would become clean. They didn't know how long it would take to flush out the system to the extent that the contamination was. so that made planning very difficult and and i sort of woke up one morning almost as a joke and thought what if we bring our own water like what if we bring our own water to the restaurant and i found this website called tank depot yeah yeah yeah it is what it sounds like almost as a joke i'm like there's no way we actually have to do this this is ridiculous it's a terrible idea but as a joke i sent a photo of a of a potable water tank like a like a water tank that's fda approved to hold clean drinking water i said it to my managers i'm like haha if we don't get water back we'll do this like as like as a joke i was ha ha yeah of course but then as we were getting to the to the end of our pop-up at san vicente for two weeks i thought just for times desperate measures so what's the biggest source the need for water in a restaurant oh my god thinking about the logistics of bringing your water in um i mean what we're using water for i mean everything yeah hands front of house hand sinks toilets back of house dish dishwashing machine sanitation equipment We need washing.

1:06:13We still brought in like jugs of water for like making our stocks and our sauces and so on, but our syrups in the bar and whatnot. And of course, for customers drinking too. Right, and for customers drinking, we did all jugs of water, but you need potable. We could have served it. We could have used it. It was licensed. I got the water tested. So I got those tanks in and I don't know why I was feeling very ambitious. I said, we're opening on Valentine's Day. 14th of February, we're opening no matter what. and I learned my lesson on this. I was like, you know what, I'm going to plummet myself. Realized very quickly I'm a terrible plumber.

1:06:49Respect to the plumbers out there. I plumbed it myself, tied into the system, got these reduction brushes, got this into our ball files and this, got the tape. And then I found this, you know, there's only about a handful of companies in California which are licensed to haul, to transport clean drinking water, hullable water. Found one of them, this lovely company that actually supplies Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert. Convinced them to come to Los Angeles. Of course, they'd never taken their trucks to LA before because why would you need to transport water into a city with city plumbing? Convinced them to come.

1:07:24They fill up the water tanks. I'm feeling like on the top of the world. I'm like, fuck yeah, the tanks worked. It's great. This guy heard the water tank. He came, he filled up the tanks. It was amazing. Then I look back, everything's fucking leaking. Everything, the water is leaking. It's just gushing. Gushing. from one tank gushing the other one's dripping oh my gosh that was i was saying the most challenging period of my life that probably was the three worst days of my life because i had now 2 000 gallons of water stored in these tanks with leaks yeah and no way of flushing the system the hose had a you know i thought i'll just fill them switch off the ball valve hose comes in three days yeah three days of yeah of just and we need a very particular hose that was three days of leaking three days of leaking yeah i slept maybe six hours in those three days across those three days just taking pans underneath each one thankfully there's the channel there's a like a river behind our restaurant so taking those dumping it into the channel putting it back running to home depot getting so i asked chat gpt what do i do they said you get this like put this putty on it and that should fix it.

1:08:35Chachi BD was wrong. So three days until the hose arrived and we could plumb out. But then that meant that we were getting to our deadline on Valentine's Day. So I called the plumber of the restaurant, got this crazy pump, I had to drive to Tijuana to pick up this pump, and so on. Because it was getting held up. They held up at customs. So we just sent someone to go there and say, hey man, I really need this pump. Whatever you do, just, I've got all the paperwork, here's our EIN, here's everything, and just please give us the pump, man. Cut the pump. Got in a restaurant. Grove it up. Switch on the system on Thursday afternoon, the 13th, that Thursday afternoon.

1:09:09Open Valentine's Day on the 14th. So you switch it on and it pushes up the system and it's like, let's go. And it worked. I mean, if that didn't switch on, we would have had to cancel 80 reservations for Valentine's Day. So you had the people booked and you're waiting for that switch on moment the day before. When we switched, I don't know, I'm a little crazy. Like two weeks before, like in the first of February, I'm like, we're opening Valentine's Day. Yeah. No matter what. Switch on reservations. Valentine's Day sells out within 30 minutes. I was like, God, please don't make me cancel all of these reservations.

1:09:39That would just be the... What's service like on February 14th on Valentine's Day? What's it like? I thought I would be ecstatic. I was exhausted. I was physically and emotionally done. The team was, the team did an amazing job picking me up. You know, I had to rely, you know, the team does an amazing job every single night. I was not my best self on that night. I was just, I sat down. You had some stress. I had some stress. I was, I sleep, that was a sleepless month of just constantly, you know, how, also it was my first time owning a business and being a leader during a huge challenge like that.

1:10:16Where you, you know. Did you lose your shit? I never, no, I never lost my shit per se, but I was tired. I was very tired, you know. And it's sort of, when you get to the end, it was just hard work. I didn't have time to lose my shit. It was just because I had 25 employees that relied on me, investors that relied on me to repay their loans, landlords who lost buildings that relied on us to reopen to pay rent again. And I didn't have time to, you know, between cooking for the fire department, establishing the pop-up at San Vicente, and then reopening the restaurant with these water tanks. I didn't have a second in my day to think of anything, but what's the next thing that needs to be done?

1:10:52And I had amazing people around me who picked up the pieces and made it all happen alongside me. Well, let's close, and I want to ask you about the restaurant now, today. I dined last night. I had some incredible risotto with a lightly, lightly cooked langoustine. Gorgeous. One of my favorite dishes this year. Oh, you're very calm. And just pastry, amazing pastry, too. Thank you. I could go over the whole menu, but I don't have time. Where are you at right now with the restaurant? How's it going? Thank God, touch wood. We're an amazing place. So when we reopened after the fires, it wasn't so busy, of course.

1:11:31But our reservations have exploded again about two months ago. Thank God we're fully booked every night. We're fully booked for the next—our reservations, we're in those two weeks. We're fully booked for the next two weeks. So thank God. I have an amazing team around me that's stuck by our side, you know, like that month. I mean, we also have an amazing back-of-house, too, now. Now, the opening of the restaurant, it was hard to find the right team, but we've got an amazing back-of-house team, an amazing front-of-house team. I'm so grateful for the love and the care that they put into it every single day.

1:11:59The business is doing very well. Thank you. I love to hear that. And it's also allowed us to push. I think the restaurant is anywhere, every single aspect of the restaurant is anywhere between 20 % to 80 % better today than it was in December. we've been able to just push everything our service our hospitality the playlist the lighting our valet service aren't obviously the the food as well and the execution of our dishes too yeah well well let's leave it there i wanted to have you in to talk about the your story which is remarkable this was a little light on food detail and that's okay because we're going to do this again i would love to have you back it'd be my pleasure on the show and let's check in in uh Let's check it in like a year or so, because I know things are going to be in an even better place for me.

1:12:43I'm pulling for you, Fardad. I really respect you. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me today.

1:12:56This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Logo and guest illustrations by Ellie Skrzat. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.