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Muse cafe kitchen bar9/22/2023 At these lights, turn right towards the airport and, in just 75m or so, turn right again to come down one of the roads that form the one way system past the Municipal Building. In the centre of Paphos Old Town, the road would crank left then right to continue to Polis Viejo is on this corner and the first set of traffic lights here is marked 'Polis' to the left and 'Airport' to the right. Although not on a main road, finding Muse isn't too bad once you know how! From Kato Paphos, take the road north towards Polis. This isn't fine dining as there are no real 'evening dining' dishes on the menu but lunch or brunch will be a special event here. Burgers are quite exceptional and other dishes are all of the highest quality imaginable. A 'Fruit Sharing Platter' is a giant masterpiece of artistry that it seems almost a shame to destroy by eating. At first glance, the menu seems to be expensive and, indeed, by Cyprus standards, it is. This is a place to divide your time between looking at the view and watching the other guests. The waiting staff are fairly efficient even if most of them seem to have been chosen for their 'Vogue' looks rather than their warmth and charm. Lots of low settees and comfy seating too. It's a bar, a café and a restaurant and has both outside and inside tables. Everything is modern, scrupulously clean and, yet again, stylish. The place itself sits perched on a plateau above central Paphos and affords stunning views over the town. How posh? Well, look at the cars in the car park (our Honda squeezed in between a Hummer and a Maserati). It's the place where every other table is occupied by a pair of beautiful people languishing in the Cyprus sun but who wouldn't dream of doing anything so crass as getting a tan. This place is hard to find as it's not on the beaten track and so it shouldn't be a surprise to find that it's full of the wealthy set of Paphos who want to see and be seen. However, Muse really is the essence of 'class' and so is not at all pretentious it's the real thing. This place is quite unusual, for me, as I see lots of places that try to be 'classy' but end up just being pretentious and I loath pretention. A chef as fixated as Carmy isn't turning over a new leaf anytime soon.Having read the reviews on Tripadvisor, we tried Muse for the first time this year and I must agree with the positive comments of other reviewers. If Carmy's books are askew, so must be the man himself and - without giving too many spoilers away - I'd bet Richie's lucky new suit or Marcus' beanie that by the next time we see the chef on the warm side of the walk-in door, those books won't just be categorized and alphabetized they'll be uniformly re-covered in grease-proof paper with kitchen tape labels bearing the Sharpied-on title, author, publish date, and possibly even the ISBN in a violent attempt to restore order to his life. I may be reading too much into the housekeeping proclivities of a fictional character, but I'm chalking that up to the exquisite detail the writers, crew, and cast - including culinary producer and chef Courtney Storer, creator and co-showrunner Christopher Storer, and chef Matty Matheson as restaurant handyman Fek - have put into the creation of this sweaty, heartfelt, passionate, empathetic, and often enervating portrayal of a profession and people I hold dear, and characters I've come to adore. It trips into molecular whimsy via el Bulli, wends over to Japan to meditate on the methods of Masaharu Morimoto and Shizuo Tsuji goes fancy Cali with 1988 F&W Best New Chef Thomas Keller, Alice Waters, and 2009 F&W Best New Chef Christopher Kostow and finds soul and root in Italian and Italian American home cook fare as well as the works of African American scholars like Dr. It veers toward Scandinavian precision with a whole suite of René Redzepi tomes (though pastry chef Marcus keeps copies stashed out of harm's way on a shelf above his work station) and the works of Magnus Nilsson and Christian Puglisi. It's deeply steeped in French technique á la the Troisgros Brothers, Pierre Gagnaire, Jacques Maximin, Joël Robuchon, Jacques Pépin, Sébastien Bras, and their peers. The books, which have seemingly tripled or quadrupled in number (and which I paused and took grainy pictures and screenshots of and compared against my own collection or used fragments of words or graphics on the spine to track down like I work for a culinary CSI division), are meticulously selected and entirely fitting with the continuing self-education of a fine-dining chef who's done stints at Noma, Eleven Madison Park, The French Laundry, and their fictional analogues.
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