Susan Feniger talks restaurants and food

I’m wild about Susan Feniger and not just because of her fabulous restaurants. She’s is an active member of the LGBT community and last month raised $30,000 for the LA Gay & Lesbian Center by auctionung off group cooking lessons. (That’s me, below) pictured with Susan that night).

Anyway, the Los Angeles Times’ Patt Morrison, who I always learn new words from whenever I hear her on the radio or read her stories, did a Q&A with Miss Feniger . Her LA-area restaurants are Border Grill and Ciudad (co-owned by business partner Mary Sue Milliken) and her newest eatery Susan Feniger’s Street.

Here is a taste of that column:

Q. Why don’t all chefs weigh 5,000 pounds?
A. I wouldn’t want to sit and have a big meal, because I want to be able to go into the kitchen and taste everything, and once you’ve had a big meal, things taste very different. My Chinese doctor wants me to eat in the morning, but I just can’t do that, because I want to walk through the kitchen and taste every single thing, even if it’s just a spoonful, and that’s like having a meal. The only time I really eat a big meal is if I’m sitting down and having a meeting. Or I’ll eat late at night. If it’s not popcorn, I’ll have a drink and cheese and crackers and an artichoke and avocado, and it’s 1 o’clock in the morning.

What’s the restaurant world’s definition of success? That customers can’t get a reservation? They have to wait an hour and a half for a table?
In the ideal scenario, yeah, you’ve got an-hour-and-a-half wait, you’re so busy no one can get a reservation — all that’s great, as long as the customer has a great time, great food and feels their experience is fantastic. And you know, that is fleeting. If you ever start to take that for granted, that you think you can be snooty or you don’t have to be respectful to people, that is the downfall. Don’t ever believe that that’s not going to go away, because it will. [It’s] the nature of the restaurant business. Making money is critical, and surely I’d love to get investors paid back. If I drive past Mozza and see they’re busy and we’re slow, aaaagh, I want to kill myself. And then I have to go, “There’s plenty out there for everybody. We just need to do the best we can do and make sure we watch our costs and run smart.”

Q. What cooking disasters stay in your mind?
A. Screw-ups that, now that you look back on, are funny. One time [Mary Sue and I] were driving downtown, doing an event. We had two 5-gallon buckets of hollandaise. We slammed on the brakes and the buckets went all the over the floor of my old Datsun. It was just, “Crap, oh, crap!” We scooped the top of it — not the bottom, the top of it — and used it.