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Academy Museum’s restaurant plans come with big names attached: Wolfgang Puck and Bill Chait

The new Academy Museum occupies the old May Company building on Wilshire Boulevard.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will include a two-story restaurant that will host small and communal tables for sit-down dining, an Art Deco-style bar and lounge area, and a market section for prepared foods.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
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When the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opens Sept. 30, visitors will be able to stroll through exhibitions dedicated to the history of film and, fittingly, also will be able to find a mix of old and new Hollywood style through the venue’s food offerings.

On Monday, the museum announced details about Fanny’s, a 10,000-square-foot, two-story restaurant that will host small and communal tables for sit-down dining, an Art Deco-style bar and lounge area, and a market section for prepared foods. Curved booths, wall paneling and other design elements will take their inspiration from studio backlots, old Hollywood gathering spots such as the Brown Derby and the Streamline Moderne-style museum building itself.

The restaurant’s chef and cuisine have yet to be announced, but guests will be able to order breakfast, lunch, dinner and weekend brunch, with daily service and 250 seats spread throughout Fanny’s various spaces.

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Restaurateur Bill Chait (formerly of Bestia, Sotto, République and others) and the chief executive of Wolfgang Puck Catering, Carl Schuster, will develop Fanny’s, while Wolfgang Puck’s catering operation — the caterer of the Oscars for a quarter of a century — will oversee food for private events and other gatherings, including those held in the museum’s top-floor events space and terrace, which can seat 600.

A representative of Puck’s catering program said it will take inspiration from the film industry and create dishes unique to the museum, tying some of them to exhibitions. Desserts could include macarons and bonbons in movie candy-inspired flavors, while savory menus will incorporate some of the Spago chef’s most famous items, such as smoked salmon pizza, truffled chicken pot pie and tuna tartare cones.

Fanny’s takes its name from vaudeville actor and singer Fanny Brice, the grandmother of donor Wendy Stark and the inspiration for the 1968 film “Funny Girl” — produced by Stark’s father, Ray Stark. Reservation information, as well as the menu and chef of Fanny’s, will be announced in the coming months.

The museum, which is run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is set to open with such exhibits as a retrospective of Studio Ghibli director and co-founder Hayao Miyazaki; “Stories of Cinema,” which will feature rotating galleries devoted to eras, actors, directors and specific films; and an interactive “Oscars Experience.”

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