You can get a taste too during Santa Monica Restaurant Week which runs from January 6 through January 12. "It's all about tasting, you've got to taste it every step of the way," said Milliken. To find the perfect balance of ingredients, they rely on their taste buds. "You get the spice, you get the salitness and richness from the sesame and soy, and then you get the acid the sort of bitter and acid from the kumquat so it's all these flavors put together," said Feniger. The poke is about 50 percent protein with the salmon, and 50 percent veggies using fennel, serrano chilis, and scallions, with a soy, sesame, yuzu sauce that's jam-packed with flavor. When you visit Socalo for Santa Monica Restaurant Week you'll have a choice of getting your sustainable salmon poke as an appetizer or as an entree' over red rice. So if every chef in the United States decided tomorrow, 'I'm only going to serve sustainable seafood,' that would be huge." "Eighty percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is consumed outside the home," said Milliken. For 30 of those years, they have exclusively served sustainable seafood. The pair have been working together for nearly four decades and have made their fair share of ceviches and poke over the years. Their food is a 2020 take on where Mexican food meets Southern California. The restaurant's name 'Socalo' is a mash-up of SoCal and Zocalo - the Spanish word for town square. Among their ventures, Socalo stands out as a beacon of community and culinary excellence in Santa Monica. "It gets people out of their homes and into the restaurants and trying new things," Milliken said. Los Angeles chefs and culinary pioneers, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, have built an impressive portfolio of Mexican-inspired eateries over their 40-year collaboration. The event is something Milliken feels is a lot of fun for the customer and the chef.
This year a record-number 37 restaurants around town are participating, creating their own kumquat concoctions. "We thought the addition of thin-sliced kumquats would just be perfect and make that dish just alive," Milliken said.Įvery year Santa Monica Restaurant Week happens in January to coincide with California Restaurant Month. Former Italian Musician Brings Art to Kitchen.Traditional Yucatan-Style Food Gets Modern Spin.They also operate BBQ Mexicana, a fast casual concept with two Las Vegas locations, and Socalo which opened in late 2019 in Santa Monica. Korean Kimchi Catching on With Health Conscious Foodies Chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken are the owners and operators of the Border Grill restaurants which they began in 1985.The two are using the special ingredient in a salmon poke. Socalo opened in late December, 2019 as the latest venture from long-time chef partners, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. In this kitchen over the next week, there's going to be a lot of slicing of kumquats.