Van was just 3 years old, his sister Ra was 4 when their family moved here almost 70 years ago. “We cook the cheese on the comal and stick the tortilla to it. MEHTA: Their house is now where the Santa Monica Freeway is. “We’re making the most delicious tacos,” Milliken said. The opening menu is also reflective of a number of dishes that are dominating the conversations around Mexican food in Los Angeles at the moment, including birria and vampiros. Milliken also created a savory granola inspired by a dish she had in Brazil and plans to serve it for breakfast with chopped tomatoes and cucumber with yogurt and extra-virgin olive oil. The crudité platter will feature fresh vegetables as well as chicken chicharrones. You can expect to find plenty of oysters, ceviche and sustainable seafood on the menu. The restaurant is meant to be a sort of edible narrative that chronicles their travels to different regions of Mexico and, in particular, Tijuana. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)Īs such, they call Socalo a California canteen and Mexican pub that, like Border Grill, will serve the duo’s Mexican-inspired food. Inside Socalo, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger’s new restaurant in Santa Monica. This is our 2020 take on where Mexican food meets California.” “We have never been good at being boxed into a certain thing,” Milliken said. Instead, they describe themselves as collaborators with their chef, Giovanni Lopez, and as appreciators of the cuisine they built their careers on. Milliken and Feniger are the first to say they don’t identify as ambassadors for Mexican cuisine. Los Angeles is now home to many outstanding regional Mexican restaurants - there is exceptional Yucatan cooking at Holbox and Chichén Itzá, Oaxacan at Guelaguetza, coastal Nayarit at Coni’Seafood - and a new generation of Mexican-American chefs, including Carlos Salgado, Wes Avila and Ray Garcia, who have crafted a regionless, progressive Angeleno style of Mexican food. “A lot of people who wouldn’t dare admit it at the moment may have first tasted panuchos, tinga, freshly made tortillas and pescado Veracruzana at Border Grill.”Īlthough they were ahead of the media and many American chefs and restaurateurs in celebrating regional Mexican cooking in the 1980s, much has changed since.

“They explored regional Mexican cooking a decade before the idea became fashionable,” Jonathan Gold wrote last year when he announced that Milliken and Feniger would be the recipients of the second annual Gold Award.

Susan landon santa monica