Celebrity Chef Susan Feniger talks business, love and the importance of failure – Orange County Register

Liz Luckman (left) and Susan Feniger (provided by H2 Public Relations)

Filmmaker Liz Lachman had no plans to direct the documentary. But in 2009, when Susan Feniger, the Food Network star and restaurateur’s wife, was conceiving and about to open her first solo venture, Hollywood Restaurant Street, Luckman turned the cameras on her. I picked it up and started filming the process. As a result, “Susan Feniger: Forked” is an intimate depiction of how there is more to a successful restaurant than popularity and critical acclaim. The film will have its West Coast premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival on October 17th.

Although “Forked” ostensibly focuses on the struggles of opening a restaurant, Lachman says her documentary goes beyond the challenges of the industry. “How do people scrape themselves off the sidewalk? Because that’s the measure of success in life and how you deal with failure,” she says.

The Street was highly anticipated when it opened in 2009 and quickly garnered attention (the late critic Jonathan Gold described it as “somewhere between a sophisticated cocktail party and a political act”), but the “effects… It was closed by 2013 due to the lack of That’s what it was designed to do, or what it was supposed to do,” says the filmmaker. Feniger added, “I love the food, and I love the team that we built, because it was a very small, close-knit team. She came up to me and said it was her favorite restaurant experience ever.” To which she jokingly replied: “Obviously, it wasn’t enough.”

Ten years from now, Street’s global street food model might be compared to The Bear’s “chaos menu” (you know who you are), or a violent clash of cultures. The film follows Feniger (a co-owner of the short-lived restaurant, who also appears in the documentary) from the early stages of building the restaurant on Highland Avenue to international sites to create the menu. This is what I followed.

“We went to Vietnam, Shanghai and Singapore and sampled street food,” says Lachman. “I covered everything. I don’t know how I did it, but it’s all there.”

“As we put the film together, we realized that at the end of the day, this story wasn’t about the restaurant, it was Susan’s story,” says Lachman. “Her life didn’t end in a restaurant. So what did she do? How did she get through it?”

Feniger said that while “Street” was a personal endeavor, it didn’t change his passion for his decades-long career in the culinary world. (She opened the Mud Hen Tavern in its place, but it closed after nearly three years in business.) It depends on what kind of impact they have and what they do or don’t do.”Next. “

The film, which Rutschman shot in 2009-2010 and then in 2021 and 2022, also stars Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck (just before Puck opens Spago, and Feniger as a line cook at Ma Maison). (with whom he worked), longtime business partner and friend Mary Sue Milliken.

The couple, who live together in Brentwood’s Crestwood Hills enclave, met one afternoon during a blind date, but it wasn’t their own date.

“We met at the Border Grill in Santa Monica, and Liz was there with two women I knew and a woman I was on a blind date with,” she said, to talk to everyone but Liz. says Feniger, who kept coming to the table.

“She looked at everyone at the table except me, and at first I thought, ‘Wow, she’s so rude.’ But then, when I was a waitress, I thought the customers were attractive.” I remembered when they couldn’t look into my eyes when they ordered. ”

The two are currently married and have been together for 28 years. Ms. Feniger continues to run her restaurant empire, including the Las Vegas front location of Border Girlfriend Grill and Ms. Feniger and Ms. Milliken’s latest joint venture, Zocalo.

Feniger and Lachman are scheduled to appear at the Newport Beach Film Festival later this month to attend a screening of “Susan Feniger: Forked.” The event will include a moderated question-and-answer session with the couple, who are part of Feniger’s signature work. Other celebrities from the culinary world will also appear. All-inclusive reception and movie admission is $150. Film-only passes are $20.