Susan Feniger’s third act looks a lot like her second. For 40 years, the 71-year-old celebrity chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and radio and TV personality has traveled the world, bringing food from different cultures back to her several influential Los Angeles restaurants—past and present—including: Ciudad, STREET, Border Grill, and SOCALO.
“When I was in college, I tried to see if I could live on three hours of sleep a night because I felt like sleep was a waste of my time,” Feniger explains. “Honestly, [now]there are many times where I feel like I’d rather stay up really late and get up really early. … I’d rather go, go, go, go, go most of the time.”
And go she does.
These days, Feniger is busier than ever. When wildfires ravaged parts of Los Angeles in January, she sprang into action.
Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken, her longtime business partner and co-host of the cooking show “Too Hot Tamales,” among other endeavors, teamed up with other Los Angeles chefs and Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen (WCK) to provide meals to those impacted by the LA wildfires.
Working under the guidance and expertise of the amazing nonprofit WCK, the duo’s Border Grill SOCALO Truck was placed at the Pasadena Convention Center for the first five days with WCK. They then got moved to Pacific Coast Highway to feed firefighters, first responders, and the Santa Monica Police Department before heading to the Santa Anita Racetracks.
In the first five days after the fires broke out on January 7, Feniger, Milliken, and their team served approximately 16,000 meals, not including what the other WCK Chef Corps partners provided. This was in addition to the around 3,000 meals a day their team prepares for food insecure people in Los Angeles at 10 different locations.
Plus, Feniger and Milliken appeared on a variety of shows—from morning news to late-night TV—talking about the work they were doing. (Learn more at WorldCentralKitchen.com and RegardingHerFood.org.)
“When you have restaurants, it gives you a bigger opportunity to [give back],” Feniger explains. “The kids who work for us see how they can give back as they grow older and as they get more opportunities, whether it’s financially or just getting involved, so I like passing that on.”
She adds, “It’s always been a very rewarding part of my career, so I don’t have a desire to not be working.”
Fires notwithstanding, Feniger’s downtime has increased over the years. This was thanks in part to how the restaurant business changed during COVID. Plus, she and her partner, filmmaker Liz Lachman are constantly working on projects together. Lachman captured the journey of Feniger’s first solo restaurant, STREET, in the award-winning Susan Feniger’s FORKED,
“I work more from home than I have in the past, but it still feels like I’m quite busy,” she says.
Something Feniger has tried to do is find more balance, more time for hanging out with Lachman and their friends, golfing, reading, and going to the movies.
This is a challenge since she loves downtime as much as work time and her natural tendency is to go to her restaurant.
Philanthropy is another one of Feniger’s passions. She is a founding board member of the Scleroderma Research Foundation and has been on the board since 1988. She is also on the board of the Los Angeles LGBT Center and has been co-chair for the last five years.
“We started a culinary program at the (center’s) Anita May Rosenstein campus in Hollywood,” she explains. “It’s part of my passion to be able to give back to the community; it also takes time commitment and work, but it’s also very rewarding.”
Feniger is also working with the West LA Veterans Medical Center to get a 15-acre garden replanted to provide food for the veterans.
As much as she loves to guide others, Feniger enjoys her own culinary adventures, whether it’s picking up techniques and tricks—since there are always new things happening in the world of cooking—or discovering new flavors or dishes, at home or around the world.
Feniger got her love of cooking from her mom. The travel bug bit her at a young age, too.
“When I was a junior in high school I spent time at a farm in Holland,” she recalls. “I remember that’s where I first started eating [and loving]mayonnaise with French fries.”
When she lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a few months, it opened her eyes to that food and culture since it was a cuisine she didn’t grow up with in Toledo, Ohio.
“I guess that sparked my interest,” she says. Once Feniger started working in kitchens to make money while attending Pitzer College, that was it. She found her passion.
After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in New York, Feniger joined the nearly all-male kitchen at Chicago’s Le Perroquet—the only other woman in the kitchen was Milliken. After working for Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison in Los Angeles, she had the opportunity to work in the south of France.
“That took me to another level of food inspiration,” she says.
From there Feniger took her first trip to India, where she spent three weeks in the kitchen of an ashram, which kicked off a love for Indian food and exploring other cuisines. Working with Hispanic men and women in a Mexican kitchen piqued her interest in that cuisine, so Feniger traveled to Mexico.
“Having the ability to go to another country made me realize how expansive food could be,” she says. “And how different [it was from]the strict French training I had, but how [it was]equally as interesting and important as my time in the ashram kitchen.”
Feniger and Milliken teamed up in 1981 to open City Café, which became CITY Restaurant in Los Angeles. They have since opened multiple Border Grill locations, food trucks, full-service events and a catering business. With locations in Los Angeles and Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Border Grill serves street food-inspired regional Mexican cuisine with a commitment to conscientiously sourced ingredients. Other restaurants include BBQ Mexicana, Pacha Mamas, SOCALO, and most recently, Alice B., a California twist on Mediterranean food in Palm Springs.
Feniger finds the most rewarding part of travel is learning about a culture through its food—something you can do without getting on an airplane.
“If you’re willing to go into different parts of your city or area, and experiment with street food, like I do when I’m traveling around the world, that gives you a glimpse into another culture,” she says. “Cooking food from different cultures is also an interesting way to understand [them].”
For instance, you could eat noodles in a Thai restaurant and then come home, look up Pad Thai and try to make it. Once you have tasted an authentic version, you have something to go by.
“During COVID, I taught many of my relatives how to make tortillas at home,” she says. “I think my niece was blown away that she could make homemade tortillas in Toledo.”
Another option is to get a cookbook from any country, go into one of those specialty markets and buy ingredients you’ve never seen before. Learn about them and then cook with them.
“Food is an equalizer in many ways and that’s why food trucks are always interesting to me,” Feniger says. “Street food is interesting, particularly in different cultures in the United States.”
No matter how much money you have you can always get great street food.
“You get to experience something that someone probably made in their home over and over and over again,” she says. “People get excited when someone from another culture is willing to branch out of their comfort zone [and try their food].”
When traveling, go a little off the main area and find those tiny hole-in-the-wall places. It puts you more into someone’s life when you’re in a neighborhood spot versus a fancy restaurant. They are glad you are there and so are you.
“So much of travel is the interaction with different people,” she says. “Restaurant people, most of the time, want to talk and share stories because they’re in the hospitality business.”
Feniger’s zest for learning and travel is never going away. And that’s a good thing.
“I feel like I just want to jam as much into my life as I can and it doesn’t always have to be [just]exploring new things,” she says. “It could be simple things, like maybe I want to take piano lessons or I want to learn more Spanish so I can speak it more fluently.”
Feniger wants her world to continue to get bigger—not smaller—as she continues her third act.
Debra Eckerling is a freelance writer, goal-strategist, workshop leader, and award-winning author and podcaster. The creator of The DEB Method for Goal-Setting Simplified, Eckerling hosts the GoalChat and Taste Buds with Deb podcasts and is the author of Your Goal Guide and 52 Secrets for Goal-Setting and Goal-Getting.
Older is the New Brave: An Interview with Leeza Gibbons — 3rd Act Magazine
Diana Nyad and Bonnie Stoll Want to Take You for a Walk — 3rd Act Magazine