Karen.65th_Layout 1 4/22/11 2:49 PM Page 48
48 April 28, 2011
65th Anniversary
Park Labrea News/Beverly Press
Susan Feniger Takes it to the STREETS by jose martinez
N
early 30 years ago, young up-and-coming chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken were making a name for themselves cooking on a hibachi on a Melrose Avenue alley at their first joint venture restaurant, City Café . Since then, the dynamic duo, later known as “Two Hot Tamales” from their Food Network series, have been fixtures of the local culinary scene, with successful restaurants around town like City, formerly on La Brea Avenue, Border Grill, with locations in Santa Monica, downtown L.A., LAX, and Las Vegas, and most recently, Feniger’s first self-opened restaurant, Street on Highland Avenue. Feniger decided to come back to the neighborhood where her career first took off when opening Street, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary this month. “This is my old stomping grounds,” Feniger pointed out. “Thirty years ago in 1981, I opened City Café on Melrose next to l.a. Eyeworks. That was my very first restaurant here, and Mary Sue and I partnered on that. I lived in a duplex on Mansfield and Beverly. Then Mary Sue and I opened City on La Brea, so I feel this neighborhood is where I started my restaurant career. When I was looking to do Street, I wanted to go where I had my roots and a connection with the neighborhood.” Further cementing her relationship to the area is the fact that Feniger sits on the board of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center. “This board of powerful leaders in our community is fantastic,” Feniger said. “The work we get accomplished continues to blow me away each and every time we are
all together. To be a part of an organization that is making such big steps in every way is an honor. I would like to think I do more than I do, but I co-chair the event called Simply Divine each year, a food and wine event in Beverly Hills. I try to attend board meetings and retreats, and open my restaurants to business meetings for committees, and for cocktail parties for fundraisers. It’s a center that takes pride in everything we are.” An award-winning chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and radio and TV personality, Feniger is a classically trained graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. She was raised in Toledo, Ohio and found influence in her mother’s home cooking, as well as savory dishes from around the world. “My mom was a fantastic cook, and part of being a good cook is seasoning things well,” Feniger said. “When she’d grill a steak she’d use paprika, Worcestershire, and just season it perfectly, which is no different than what I do now. I may turn to Latin, Indian or Asian flavors, but it’s all the same. In high school my parents let me live in Holland and Israel for a little while and I think that really opened my eyes to other cultures and their food.” Upon her arrival in Los Angeles, Feniger, who had been working in Chicago’s famed Le Perroquet, began her local career working alongside Wolfgang Puck and immediately felt comfortable in his kitchen. “I came from Chicago and interviewed with Wolf, L’Ermitage, Ken Frank at La Toque, and L’Orangerie, those were the four restaurants I was looking at,” Feniger recalled. “And I really wanted to get into Ma Maison. It was the least stuffy and Wolf was the least stuffy and the friendliest. I had all my training in French restaurants, but I was
drawn to the food that Wolf was doing. It big City there was something really wonderwas more California cuisine and I remember ful connecting with people. The customers calling Mary Sue and saying, ‘You’re not needed a connection to the kitchen, to see going to believe this, you can wear tennis what’s happening. I think the restaurant shoes in this business is about peokitchen.’ Ma Maison ple, whether it’s the “I was a Midwest girl and had people that work for felt so much looser and so much worked in Upstate New York and you, from the dishyounger. And I was a washer to the general Midwest girl and had Kansas City and the tickets would manager, to the cusworked in Upstate tomers, and the percome in [at Ma Maison] and New York and son who gets a Coke they’d be orders from Jane Fonda, at the bar is just as Kansas City and the tickets would come important as the perRaquel Welch, Paul Newman, in [at Ma Maison] who’s sitting and Orson Welles. It was the place son and they’d be orders spending $100. It’s a where everybody went. from Jane Fonda, service-oriented busiRaquel Welch, Paul ness.” I’m still totally star struck.” Newman, Orson Over the years, Welles. It was the Feniger has seen the place where everybody went. I’m still total- Los Angeles food scene rise from the shadly star struck.” ows of culinary cities such as New York and Feniger teamed up with Milliken and San Francisco, and is proud of the level of founded City Café , without a stove in their success and recognition she and her adopted kitchen. They eventually expanded and city have reached. opened City on the corner of La Brea and Looking at the future of the Los Angeles Second Avenues. food landscape, the sky is the limit accord“I’ve always been drawn to areas that ing to Feniger. Just as she started from humaren’t developed,” Feniger noted. “I was on ble beginnings, Feniger believes new chefs my moped riding up and down the streets can do the same, thanks to the current food and saw this old carpet warehouse on truck phenomenon. Second and La Brea. It was owned by two “The great thing about the trucks is that it brothers and you literally couldn’t find them, brings the streets out there to life, because they were in the very back at their little desk. L.A. isn’t a walking city, so you don’t have And I talked to them and eventually con- the great street carts that many cities have,” vinced them to let us take over and they Feniger noted. “I love it! I’ve always been moved their business to the Valley. I loved drawn to street food. I loved the taco trucks that building! It was on the corner and close even before the craze.” to City Café on Melrose Avenue. I just With her heart buried deep in the Hancock loved where it was.” Park and Miracle Mile communities, City became a hot spot and was highlight- Feniger loves every savory morsel that Los ed by its live camera feed of all the action in Angeles embodies. the kitchen displayed on monitors above the “I see L.A. more ahead of its time than bar. any city in the states, even New York. It’s “That was fun,” Feniger recalled. “At City more progressive and edgy. There’s a youthCafé, to go to the bathroom you had to go ful culture about L.A. I see our restaurants as through the kitchen, so when we opened the that too, not too serious, not too fancy.”
photo by Jose Martinez
After 30 years of operating several renowned LA restaurants, Susan Feniger, owner and chef of Street, is still one hot tamale.