We had spent a lot of time in Oaxaca and the Yucatán, learning about traditional Mexican regional dishes that we had never seen. We were make homemade tortillas, we were going to Mexico and learning about ingredients we had never seen before. We were doing food and Mexican beers and margaritas, and there wasn’t an upscale Mexican food scene happening on the westside, so we stood out. “Our first Border Grill on Melrose was 31 years ago, so back then there wasn’t a lot happening in terms of restaurants that were doing Mexican, other than taquerias of course. In the 1980s in Los Angeles, there was little gourmet Mexican outside of small taquerias in East Los Angeles, and Border Grill introduced a new type of Mexican cuisine to discerning diners. So Mary Sue and I thought, ‘Cool, let’s do a Border Grill there.’” Back then, we had done consulting for Angel City Brewery in a location that was going out of business, and it became available. “We had this tiny little Border Grill that was nine/ten tables with a tiny, little kitchen. We wrote the menu and opened Border Grill from our first road trip.”īorder Grill was wildly successful and prompted the opening of a larger location in Santa Monica.

“Mary Sue and I were deciding what to do with City Cafe, so we tossed a coin between ‘Mexico taco stand’ and ‘Japanese noodle shop.’ Mexico won, so we took a ten-day trip to Mexico, stayed at the home of a kid who worked with us in Mexico City. In fact, Mary Sue and Susan literally flipped a coin. It wasn’t necessarily in her life plan, and it was truly an unsystematic decision. Then we turned the little City Cafe on Melrose into our first Border Grill.”Ĭonsidering Susan’s entire training and experience in French culinary arts, her faithful foodie fan base was surprised when she started serving Mexican. With this success, we thought we should open a bigger restaurant, which we did, now City restaurant, which has Indian, Thai, French, and more. I called Mary Sue and about a year later she came out and worked at City Cafe with me. We got our first gourmet write up for a tiny café.

I worked both jobs for six months before I decided I would go there full-time. I had two hibachis in the back parking lot and made food for them. They were doing great espressos but they were buying food from the outside, like sardine sandwiches, so I put a hot plate in there and did soup of the day. “City Cafe was a tiny coffee shop, and I went in every day to help them put a special on the menu. Still working at Ma Maison, a friend was running a small coffee shop where Susan helped design a menu. While French cuisine was her forte, the universe had other plans for her. Truly filled with a passion for French cooking, Susan took a short stint in the French Riviera at then threestarred L’Oasis before moving back to Los Angeles to work again at Ma Maison. It was so star-studded all the tickets were like Paul Newman, Orson Wells, Jane Fonda…the valet guys used to come in and tell me whose car they were parking, it was that star studded.” It was old-school, and Wolfgang was just becoming well known in the industry. “Ma Maison was really the only hip place at the time. The stars aligned for Ma Maison, an infamous, celebrity-packed restaurant helmed by a young Wolfgang Puck. At the time, there were four fabulous French restaurants she wanted to work at: Ma Maison, La Toque, L’Orangerie, and L’Ermitage. In 1978, Susan packed her bags for Los Angeles. “There were definitely walls up that were hard to climb over, but there were so many people ‘out’ in our industry that when you were in it, you didn’t feel pressure because of that.” “I worked really hard, and women in French restaurants back in the 1970s had to be strong,” she says. While she’s proven to serve up innovative and unforgettable Mexican fare, her career wasn’t planned this way considering her background in French cuisine.Ĭlassically trained at the Culinary Institute of America, Feniger landed a job at Chicago’s famed Le Perroquet in 1977 as one of the first females in the all-male kitchen. Celebrated chef, author, and entrepreneur, Susan Feniger has become legendary in Los Angeles for her award-winning restaurants CITY, Mud Hen Tavern, Blue Window, and Border Grill, her most well-known restaurant that she has operated for 35 years with business partner Mary Sue Milliken in four locations: Downtown LA, LAX International Airport, and two in Las Vegas.

Susan feniger restaurant santa monica