Luke’s Diner: Good Food with Mary Sue and Susan

I am all in Again.

I Am all in again with Scott Patterson and iHeartRadio Podcast.

Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am all in Podcast, one of the productions iHeartRadio, iHeart Media, iHeart Podcasts. Episode to Luke Steiner, we have the one and only Mary Sue Millican and Sue Fenneger. And let me tell you a little bit about these two. They are legendary culinary icons. Yes they are, and you may know them from two Hot Tomali's and Top Chef Masters. Welcome ladies, Susan and Mary Sue. Great to have you on the show. How are you today?

Hi, thank you, It's great to be here.

It's good to have you. It really is. My favorite people in the world are chefs, I tell you, especially the ones that will take an autograph photo of payment. And season one episode of twenty ps, I Love You, we are presented with Emily Gilmore's idea of a packed lunch for Rory at children. It includes a leg of lamb sandwich strudle and that is Richard's recommendations and here's some things to get us off the lunch pad. Packed lunches.

That's such a great question because we once did all the food for a film called Tortillas, which was based on an Ang Lee film that was based that was called Eat Drink Man Woman. I think so. Anyway, when they in both cases once one was Chinese Family Chinese America and the other was Mexican American. That's the one

Any quick chef approved hacks for keeping those packed lunches fresh and exciting without spending hours, don't it.

We don't have kids, so I never had to pack a lunch for kids, so, you know, very so I never I don't think I ever packed a lunch unless you know, I was packing a lunch, for us to go to the beach or for us to you know, go do something.

I think the important thing is you have to wrap everything kind of carefully. If it's wrapped well, it lasts really well.

Right, this dynamic duo right here, how'd you guys get started? How'd you first cross paths? What led you to join forces in the colinary world.

Well, we this is way back, this is in the late seventies. We met because we're both from the Midwest. I'm from Ohio, Marys who's from Michigan. We ended up meeting at a restaurant in Chicago called Lapero Ca and we were the only two women in the kitchen.

So we bonded in a big way, in a big way.

Especially because it was a very traditional French kitchen. And you know, we were sort of determined, I know, we were just we would work, you know.

Come in early, stay late.

Try to prove ourselves, always try to be as better than the guys, which.

We were, but by far, well we worked harder than all of them for sure.

Yeah.

And then by the end, when the chef went on vacation, he asked the two of us to be in charge of the kitchen, which was a huge, huge honor, and I don't know, it didn't take but a couple of years. After that, we both went to France, to Susan, to the south of France, meet to Paris to do apprenticeships, and then you know, soon after that, we just got the idea that we'd open restaurants together someday somewhere.

That was after two bottles of wine in Paris, well, when we were definitely had had too much to drink and it was raining, and then there was a rainbow, and we decided we should open up a restaurant sometime. And we couldn't figure out what city, what city it should be, but.

We both ended up.

I came back to La because I had been in La before working at Mammay Zone under Wolfgang Puck, and Mary Sue went back to Chicago. But but we eventually, within like maybe six eight months, we came back and had City Cafe, which was our first little restaurant together. It was talk about working long hours. We were opened like seven am to midnight, seven days a week.

Wow.

And that was forty four years.

Ago, right right? What a business?

And where was City Cafe?

Where was it on Melrose in La and the you know punk rock era of Melrose Avenue.

Right next to Lai Works, there was the soap plant was across the street. Our address was seventy four oh seven and a half because the space was like nine hundred square feet in total.

Gosh, it was great.

It was great.

What a hustle that must have been. Man, you guys just working your tails off.

Yeah, well just imagine imagine this we were. We had both come back.

Mary Sue was working in a restaurant in Paris. I was working in a restaurant in the south of France, both of them very high end. We come back. We opened this little city cafe with a full menu, no stove in the kitchen, no automatic dishwasher, just the three pots sink and it was Mary Sue and I and the dishwasher. And we had two hot plates like two saute pans and two habachi's on the ground and the parking lot where all the customers park after we'd come from these three star restaurants.

But you made it work.

We did. We got our first gourmet ride up there.

Fantastic. Well, you helped redefine the La food scene, right, I mean, that's pretty much what you guys did. So what was the turning point when you realized you were creating something game changing in La in the food scene.

I don't think we have yet.

You ever realized it because you're so busy. Russian, Russian, Russian, right.

Well.

I do remember Julia child coming in. She was super tall and a dear friend. But the first time we met her, she was eating in the front and we were so excited, and we look out the little square window in the kitchen door and peak, peek and see what she was doing, and tell the bus ploy, you know, give her a lot of water. So she has to go to the bathroom because the bathroom was in the kitchen. Sure enough, Julia comes walking into the kitchen. Oh my gosh, Hello,

And we had one double door because then we finally had put a stove in. We put one six burner stove in, and we had one double door refrigerator where we put everything, and that was right in front of the bathroom door.

So I was on the floor.

Organizing the little you know, double door reaching and Mary Sue was getting you know, getting something out of the oven, and we both hear this voice and we were sort of blowing. Obviously we knew it was her, and so it was embarrassing. All the food was on the floor.

It was just like, oh my god, what a mess.

But she became such an amazing supporter for us and really great friend, and we did many things with her after that, and just she was, you know, a role model. She was humble and fun and she didn't take herself too seriously.

She was great.

Man. That's like Babe Ruth walking in mentoring you guys. It's yeah, it's amazing.

That's like if you're a baseball player.

Right, if you're a baseball player, or you know, I mean ate a lot too, like you appreciated a good meal. Man. That's uh, that's quite a feather in your caps there, Julia Child, throw that name down.

I'll tell you, okay, if we're name dropping, yes, please do another. Amazing I think when there's two more, I think things that happened that I can remember that are like the most incredible things.

One thing was we got we had a show on casey r W.

We had pitched it to Ruth Seymour that we wanted to do like a five minute political food show, and she was like, no, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard, But you can do a food show, and so we did.

We'll call it Good Food and yeah, because I wanted to talk about like the horrible pest de sides on apples for school children. You know, Meryl Street had come out and against it. And I had a baby that was just like just being born, and I was so outrageous, said, that is the so unappetizing and such a bad idea. You just come on and doing food, a food show called a good food show, and then you can weave

Yeah, I mean, look, I mean I had no idea how to host a podcast, but I've been doing it for four Yeah.

But the amazing thing is, at some point in this Saturday Night Live did a spoof on our show, really and they came in and then came in and did an ass tire.

They did you know those the two of them where they say, you know and tune in next week, we'll have a whole hour show about salt.

And we felt like we had a ride.

I remember that was based on you guys.

Yeah, we felt like we had ye But she said yeah, she.

Said she'd been driving around town and listening to our show, and we were like, are we that boring? Yeah?

But so you're also in the food truck business, right, How did that? How'd that get off the ground? How did you start that? Yeah?

That was we love that. I mean that that's been like, I know, sixteen twenty years.

Yeah, but you know, Roy CHOI started it really to be fair. He and I love Roy. He's got the Kogi truck. But when he kind of went viral with you know, the very beginning of social media and like where you could find his truck that we loved the idea right away. We went out and bought a truck. And we're amazed at how it's how great it is to be able to bring your kitchen to somewhere where you can serve people nice, hot, delicious food immediately.

And and I think it was you could do it in a way, in a way where it was affordable, so that someone could come if they couldn't afford to eat at your restaurant, but they could come to the truck. And I you know, it's what I love about food trucks, the same as street food all over the world, is that it's an equalizer. It doesn't matter if you have a lot of money or you have very little money. It's sort of people love if it's a great food truck or a great street stand, people love it, and

So you too would be in the truck often prepping the meals. Would you drive the truck to the locations too, No, you had a driver, Yeah, you had a driver. And how many staff were in the kitchen with you? Just the two of you or was there some extra.

Help in the beginning?

Yeah?

I think just the two of you.

Yeah, But then you know, we would have you know, we got to the point where we could have you know, up to three people. It would fit in the kitchen. I mean it's not that big, it's a small shruck. So what the driver usually also is a cook and or the order taker, and so you know you can it comes in so handy. During the fires, we brought our truck to many different locations and fed thousands of people, fifteen hundred people in like a two hour time span. It was it's amazing.

Wait a minute, how do you feed fifteen hundred people in two hours?

Well we have a ye're like, you're standing right next to each other in a NonStop.

So what do you make and what are you serving? What are you preparing?

Well, the one I'm thinking of we had mac and cheese for the kids, these were people whose homes had burned down. We had tarioki steak for and then we had a fish, a beautiful fish salad that one of our colleagues here in town made because we got a bunch of fish donated and we didn't have the manpower to do it. So one of our chef friends, Nikki Nakayama, made a fish salad, and so we had these choices.

Nice, and we did I think one foot one of the days I worked in Alta Dina, we did a vegetarian curry, so people who were vegetarian, we did a braised brisket and then we always served like some.

Fresh veg vegetable.

We did broccoli I think with a sesame sauce on it, and it's just nonstuff. I mean, even at that event, we ran out of the vegetable, so we had gotten there was the food bank was there. We got a case of apples and I started making apple salad to go with the brisket, and with that just chopping up like for one hour straight as fast as I could, chopping up apples, mixing it with salt, pepper, olive oil

Yeah, all right, that's great, that's great.

They're known for Mexican food. But so when the National Guard came to Santa Monica to help early on, we would do a lot, like five hundred burritos every morning to take them over to the Santa Monica Police Department in Indy.

Look at you, Yeah, wow, that's true. You know, I learned. I love to cook. I'm not a professional chef by any stretch, but it's how I cooked. My wife was with my salmon, the way I prepared my salmon at the time. And I don't even remember how I used to do it because now it's just like I put some sauce on it, put.

It in the oven, and there you go.

But I learned something every time I do one of these. I learned about how to use the pasta water in the sauce to make it bind to the pasta right, so there's no more water stuff. So that's a little trick. So what are the what are the most underrated ingredients you think people should be using more in their kitchens? And maybe it can help me with my anchovies.

I think anchovies are incredible. People think they don't like them. They don't even know, you know, they don't even know When I put anchovies in they say, oh my god, this is so delicious. But if you said, would you like to have something with a little anchovy season it's like a seasoning.

It's like salt, your right.

I just think it makes everything tastes better.

I mean I think, you know, people get in habits of what they if they're cooking, what they use at home. I mean there's so many there's like, for example, o hasanta is an amazing orb.

Most people don't even know what it is or use it, but I think it's like one of them.

I mean, where people love basil, o hasanta is as interesting, if not more, but it's not used. And so people, you know, tend to sort of stick with what they know, or like Cole Robbie or you know, cell reroot. You know they're I mean up, were at our restaurant in Palm Springs, Alice b. We do this salad that goes with the bronzino that's prize and cell reroot, and people are always asking, like, what was that salad on the side of that dish? I mean, celery root you can

I mean that people. I think since COVID, I think people.

Are using more ingredients now than they were, because people are cooking at home more now than we do.

Oh yeah, if.

You could cook for any TV character, Okay, all right, because this is a podcast based on TV show, who would that character be, not the actor or the actress, but the character, right, Who would that character be? And what would you make them? Mary suit go first.

Well, the first person who who popped into my head was I dream of Genie.

I could cook for her, okay, because.

She just did so many nice things for people, you know, right, I mean that's why I love to cook. I like to cook to give back. I love to people get him excited.

What would you cook for her?

I would make her well, first, I'd have to ask her twenty questions about what she like, and but I would imagine she I would make her birthday dinner. I would make a birthday cake for her with really delicious butter cream. And I'd probably make her a really nice, you know, not too fattening meal because she's always you know, looking after her.

Weight, right right, right? TV character meal?

Yeah?

Probably, I think it'd be very fun to cook for Tony Soprano and uh and what was his wife's name?

I'm blanking on her name?

Missus missus soprano. Them is a couple I would love. I think they would have been very fun to hang out with.

What would you what would you cook them?

Definitely not Italian?

Not Italian?

Yeah, okay, huh.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you know, maybe I do like a.

Like a ribbi stuffed with roasted garlic, and you know, maybe a Jimmy Turia and crispy fingerling potatoes or something.

Oh man, man, I'm hungry. You guys are making me hungry. Is your food truck going out every day? Are just special special bookings and special parties in that kind of thing?

Yeah?

I mean right now, we're still collaborating with World Central Kitchen to feed that.

Some of the vacuies like three days a.

Week with the True but otherwise it's private parties or if there's big like like let's say, for example, like Coachella, not Coachella, but sometimes but big events where there's maybe thousands.

People, but it's usually caterings or private parties by miss Wedding.

Well, you too must be expensive.

Very We always wanted a restaurant that our friends could afford to eat in, because we've worked in restaurants that you know, the parking lots were filled with rolls, Royces and Mercedes, and we didn't really ever want that kind of restaurant. So we've always really been focused on accessibility. But I have to tell you about a dinner party I had about ten years ago. A friend of mine is a good friend of Peter Krause, and he brought his then girlfriend Lauren Graham over. I think she might

Might have been. There's a rumor going around that she was may or may have been in some episodes.

I had never actually seen the show because I think during the time when Gilmore Girls really exploded, I was like Susan and I were in the kitchen like twenty four hours a day or eighteen at least, and then sleeping for six So when she walked in, I of course didn't know who she was. They came over to my house, and when my sister found out later that I'd cooked for Lauren Graham, she just.

Was crazy excited.

She and her two daughters were huge Gilmore Girls watchers.

Right. Well, so let's say, and you're a little more familiar with the show now, right, Yeah, a little bit, A little bit. I'm not saying you're experts, but so, so you know I played a character named Luke and I had a diner. Right.

Oh cool? Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

So you haven't really seen the show all right.

So.

I think I did way bad.

I did.

You haven't seen the show at all.

I didn't know it was you? Who was Luke?

I did my.

Reason, I don't look the same, I didn't.

I knew that's who you was younger than we all were.

I had a little more hair. Yeah, I didn't need glasses.

So you had a diner? Was it fun?

Yeah, Luke Steiner? Sure? Yeah. So here's the question you come into Luke Steiner, right, what would you order? And if you haven't seen the show, I can't ask you where you'd sit because you don't know the layout.

Right, well, I'd want to sit at the counter.

There you go that, there you go there it is that I had a out, obviously, what would you.

I'd want to be? I love diners.

They are my favorite place to eat, so do I so do I They're like and old and old, you know, go to Snug Harbor all the time, you know.

I love old diners, though.

Diners are coming back. You know, it's like, oh yeah, it's really something we used.

To go for business lunches or breakfast, I mean all the time, and I would get the exact same thing, and I still do it for all these years.

I'll get cottage.

Cheese, side of avocado, side of bacon, rye toast, extra virgin olive oil and hot sauce.

There you go.

Can't beat it with a stick. Can't beat it with a stick.

I like a tune them melt myself?

Did you say?

Luke's absolutely? You know, you know what do you want right now? Caesar?

Tune them out?

Excellent? But you haven't seen the show, so yeah, anyway, ladies, it has been an extreme pleasure. Please he's come back, okay. I mean I have a list of questions that I mean, I barely you know, we barely crack the surface of this thing. So come back sometime, okay, and we'll be in touch.

I have time now, so I'll watch a bunch of old Gilmore girls and then when I come back, I will have a much better Don't believe her.

Don't believe her, Mary Sue Millican, Susan Feniger, A pleasure, Keep on truck and thank you for all you do for the LA community. Quite admirable of you and all the best too.

Thanks for coming so much, all right, thank you, all right, bye.

Bye, and that's going to wrap it up here everybody. Thanks for downloading. Best fans on the planet, and remember where you lead, we will follow. Stay safe, hey, everybody, and don't forget Follow us on Instagram at i Am all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.