![]() ![]() MILLIKEN: We’re in a position to educate people, to win them over. It’s easy for chefs to get excited about rutabagas.įENIGER: It’s harder to get these customers excited about it. If that’s what their passion is, if they want to farm rutabagas, they’ve got to find chefs like Danny Meyer in New York and they’ve got to pump them up. If they’re making that choice anyway, they’re choosing to go the hard road, as opposed to farming grapes or heirloom tomatoes. If they want to launch something that’s got a bad rep, like rutabagas or brussel sprouts, they’ve got to go the extra mile. Farmers need to be more connected with chefs. Are some foods destined to drop out of the diet?įENIGER: That’s so funny because rutabagas are one of my favorite vegetables. The sales manager thought rutabagas might be a lost cause. They tried to generate some interest in rutabagas by resurrecting a Vermont family’s heirloom variety. Q: I recently spoke with the sales manager of an heirloom seed company. is way ahead in every respect in that way. And these are the five star restaurants.įENIGER: It does seem like L.A. They’ll give you this big hunk of protein and they’ll put a couple of little pea pods and carrots on the plate. MILLIKEN: -we have to beg for vegetables, every time we go to a restaurant. is ahead of the rest of the country.įENIGER: When Mary Sue moved here, she was always saying how blown away she was by how different the customers are here compared with Chicago. I have visited a number of public schools-including my son’s school in Culver City every day-and I have found that kids are a microcosm of L.A. They’re really talking about educating children to get them more excited about choosing a healthier lunch, so that they’re not just getting fruits and vegetables that go in the trash every day. It’s not just in what they’re getting kids to eat. Even at the level of the federal government, which is usually the last to notice anything, there are big changes in the school lunch program. Here many people don’t think about their next meal until they’re so hungry that they’ve just got to go to In-N-Out Burger or something. When I lived in France, I was impressed with how every bus driver, every street sweeper, placed a lot of importance on food. ![]() MILLIKEN: There’s definitely a bit of a crisis. Q: And yet by one estimate, processed and packaged foods will account for 90 percent of expenditures on food in the United States by the turn of the century. And every day you go to the market, it’s jammed. Now every single day there’s one or two markets. In the last several years new markets have started in Beverly Hills, Culver City, Westwood, the Valley, Laguna. ![]() When we first moved here, there was a Santa Monica farmers market and maybe one in Plummer Park. I think the fact that so many of these markets have popped up and they’re busy is a good sign that there’s a demand for it. Q: But is an appreciation for new and different foods filtering into mass culture?įENIGER: I don’t think it’s yet to the masses, but I think it’s going that way. So you can come to a market like this and find things like pea shoots and sweet potato greens. All the Asian influence, the Latin influence. I mean this farmers market has grown in size and in popularity incredibly in the last five years. And I think it’s still happening to a large degree. All through the 80s, it was a steadily better and better customer base for us to cook for. MILLIKEN: When I moved here 15 years ago from Chicago, I was really impressed with Los Angelenos and how they were willing to try things. Isn’t standardization winning out over diversity in the American diet? ![]() Q: Southern Californians these days have access to a greater variety of fruits and vegetables than anyone ever, yet this region is the world capital of franchised fast food. They wouldn’t budge from their optimistic view of the future. Milliken and Feniger are long-time fans of farmers markets. One foggy Saturday morning, they took time out from an excursion through the Santa Monica market, shopping baskets in tow, to sit down for a cup of coffee and share their thoughts about food. on KCRW, and have a cable TV show, ‘The Two Hot Tamales,’ that runs for a half an hour every day on the Food TV Network. These days they are co-proprietors and chefs at the Border Grill in Santa Monica, hosts of ‘Good Food,’ a radio show that airs Saturday mornings at 11:00 a.m. Summer 1996 – Since opening City restaurant in 1982, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger have been on the cutting edge of cuisine in Los Angeles. ![]()
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