UPDATE: As of July 30, Musso & Frank has paused its takeout and delivery service. According to a statement on the restaurant’s website, to-go and delivery will resume once the restaurant’s dining room is able to reopen.
When Hollywood’s Musso & Frank Grill briefly reopened its dining rooms on June 26, the first night’s reservations were exhausted in less than two hours. Fans of the legendary restaurant were hungry to experience the steaks, prime rib, and history—while keeping a lot of space between each other. The restaurant filled the tables that were off limits with bouquets of roses, because everything is sort of special at Musso’s. But the restaurant was forced to close again after only four days when Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a shutdown of indoor dining on July 1. After an outpouring of pleas from passionate fans, the restaurant has decided to offer takeout and delivery for the first time in its 100-year history.
Diners ordering on the restaurant’s website can have a meal and a bottle of wine delivered to their homes via Postmates seven days a week, or pick up their orders in the restaurant’s rear parking lot, where a manager in a suit and tie will be waiting for them. “We were able to keep about 75 percent of the menu,” says fourth-generation owner Mark Echeverria. “The cold seafood, steak tartar, and Hollandaise sauce is not able to travel.” Since the restaurant is experimenting with a whole new service, they went to great efforts to find the perfect heavy-duty tin “hotel pan” style packaging, so that steaks remain hot when they arrive at your door. Printed historical information about the dishes, and a handwritten note certifying that the head chef and manager oversaw that the order was prepared with quality and safety in mind will also be inside.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCgeCAEjIzo/For the moment, it looks like only the kitchen staff, management, and workers preparing the new private dining rooms adjacent to the restaurant, will be allowed indoors until the state mandate is lifted. “The customers I’ve talked to are not at all interested in dining outside on the Boulevard,” Echeverria says. “Trying to create an outdoor dining experience that would be consistent with Musso’s is something very difficult to execute, even in our parking lot.”
With the exception of the brief reopening last month, the restaurant has been closed since March 15 but has kept staff on payroll while figuring out how to navigate new protocols.
“It’s going to hurt a little bit getting to the other end,” says Echeverria. “But Musso’s isn’t going anywhere.”
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