Trays, cooling racks, flour, ovens, storage decisions, and the condition of the bench will meet Nikdad Khayami before the first dinner guest does. At Fardad Khayami's West Hollywood restaurant, Nikdad Khayami will oversee the pastry program and day-to-night operation, carrying the room from bakery work during the day into dinner service at night. Fardad Khayami is not building a second Muse. He is building a new restaurant, with Nikdad Khayami shaping the daily rhythm that carries it.
Pastry asks for sequence: dough before service, cooling before cutting, clean storage before the room turns over. Dinner asks for another rhythm: prep, handoff, the pass, the last reset. When one address carries both, the seam becomes part of the cooking, and Nikdad Khayami is the steward of that seam.
Muse West Hollywood Opens on Melrose Avenue in Summer 2027
Fardad Khayami plans to open the West Hollywood restaurant in summer 2027 in the former Olivetta space, with Provençal cooking and local sourcing as the frame. For readers tracking the project, the practical markers are Melrose Avenue and the summer 2027 opening window.
The structure matters as much as the cuisine. A duplicate restaurant repeats a system; a new one has to decide what can travel and what must be remade. Fardad Khayami brings the discipline of a young Santa Monica fine-dining room, then changes the problem: a different neighborhood, a different daily clock, and a format that may ask bakers and dinner cooks to share the same spine.
For operators watching Khayami's work, the useful question is how he and Nikdad Khayami map labor, storage, ordering, pastry production, and evening service without letting one half of the day weaken the other.
Fardad Khayami's Path from Dorm Room to Santa Monica
Fardad Khayami began Muse as a dorm-room dinner party with his University of Southern California college roommate David Gelland. The pop-up was first called Museum, drew a waitlist in the thousands, and eventually moved into a permanent Santa Monica home in the former Mason Supper Club space.
Khayami, who is self-trained, opened Muse's Santa Monica location in August 2024. Its evolving menu carries a California-French line: delicata squash with toasted pistachios and vadouvan; branzino with tarragon pistou and beurre blanc. Those dishes give readers the clearest taste of the predecessor before the West Hollywood room opens.
That first room is the predecessor, not the mold. It shows how Khayami works with French reference points through California produce and a fine-dining cadence. West Hollywood gives him another set of constraints, with Nikdad Khayami at the pastry and operations seam.
Provençal Cooking Sets the Frame for the Kitchen
Provence supplies the declared compass; local sourcing supplies the constraint. In practice, Nikdad Khayami and the kitchen team will have to let nearby produce, seasonality, and supplier relationships shape the work rather than dressing a fixed idea in regional language.
Provençal cooking can be generous, direct, and exacting. The craft sits in restraint: how far to take heat, when to hold acidity, how much richness a plate can carry before it loses clarity. Local buying sharpens those decisions because Nikdad Khayami and the team have to respond to what arrives, not to an abstract pantry.
For readers, the way to read the menu will be simple: watch the produce and the Provençal frame together. Those two details will say more than the label alone.
Nikdad Khayami Builds the Handoff Between Bakery and Dinner
A bakery morning and a dinner evening put two clocks inside one room. The first shift leaves evidence: trays, cooling racks, flour, ovens, storage decisions, the condition of the bench. The second shift inherits all of it.
Nikdad Khayami's role gives that handoff a named steward. Pastry cannot sit at the edge of the operation if the daytime bakery matters. It needs its own standards, its own production rhythm, and a working relationship with the savory kitchen that survives the changeover from counter service to dinner.
The format will be judged in small transfers of care. Does Nikdad Khayami's morning work leave the room ready for night? Does the dinner team respect the labor that began earlier? Can one service day hold both forms without treating either as an add-on? Those are the questions to carry into the room when it opens.
Stolpman Vineyards Comes to Little Dom's on April 29
On April 29, Central Coast winery Stolpman Vineyards will join Carpinteria seafood spot Little Dom's for a winemaker dinner. Tickets are $125 and include a four-course meal paired with Stolpman wines; reservations are through Resy.
A winemaker dinner changes the way a bottle is handled. The wine meets salt, fat, acid, heat, and texture in sequence, and the kitchen has to decide whether to echo the glass or press against it. Stolpman brings the producer's work; Little Dom's sets it against a restaurant table. For readers who want the immediate booking rather than the 2027 watch, April 29 is the date and $125 is the cost.
What to Watch Before Muse West Hollywood Opens
The telling work will happen before the public sees the finished room: pastry testing, buying decisions, station maps, service rehearsals, and the daily handoff between Nikdad Khayami's morning production and the evening cooking team.
Follow Nikdad Khayami's bench first. If the West Hollywood restaurant finds its shape, it will show there before it declares itself at the pass.
