L.A. Times\u2019 guide to the best tacos in Los Angeles<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut it weathered years of difficulties. It opened less than three months before the global outbreak of COVID. According to Milliken, it stayed afloat for the following two and a half years through federal aid and operational pivots, and for a time things felt almost optimistic. But as restaurants reopened and a sense of normalcy returned, many of Santa Monica\u2019s office workers remained remote \u2014 a customer base that the duo said they needed in order to continue. Initially they\u2019d been flooded with the local workforce during happy hours and Friday post-workday service. It never rebounded.<\/p>\n
The entertainment industry strikes further hurt sales, and the January 2025 wildfires reduced their local customer visits by 30% to 50%.<\/p>\n
They attempted to supplement the losses by catering to studios, launching a monthly storytelling event series, and lowering lunch prices. But they couldn\u2019t make the numbers work.<\/p>\n
Socalo will host its final guests on Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
When they closed downtown\u2019s City Restaurant in 1994, Feniger and Milliken made the best of it: The day after its last night of service they hosted a large party in the parking lot, served Champagne, hired a live band and sold off the restaurant\u2019s furniture and other belongings in a kind of garage sale. They hope Socalo\u2019s end on Feb. 14 will feel every bit as much a \u201ccelebration of life,\u201d and while they haven\u2019t nailed down the menu or the entertainment, they expect it to be lively and \u2014 fittingly for the holiday \u2014 full of love.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768635732_183_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
The interior of Socalo featured dichroic lighting fixtures, custom cherry wood tables and booths.<\/p>\n
(Mel Melcon \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt really important for us to keep a presence in Santa Monica because it has been so much a part of our lives,\u201d Feniger said. \u201cI think that\u2019s why we\u2019ve held on even as we\u2019ve seen a number of our peers who have closed over the last three years in Santa Monica. We just kept hoping we could turn that corner, at least break even. But a lot of it is also because we feel a huge responsibility to the team and the people that work for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The owners alerted Socalo staff on Friday afternoon, with one month of notice before the closure. Even before the announcement, they said, they began placing calls to fellow restaurateurs to identify possible job opportunities for staff.<\/p>\n
They currently run a commissary kitchen, which might hire some of their Socalo team and serves as a base for fighting food insecurity by making and delivering meals to eight homeless shelters in L.A. In March they plan to open an even larger commissary kitchen, which they hope will diversify their business and could staff even more.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe realized that the industry is changing so much, and specifically independent restaurants. The financial equation is getting tighter and tighter and harder,\u201d Feniger said.<\/p>\n
![\"Socalo's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768635732_500_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Socalo\u2019s pipian enchiladas<\/p>\n
(Silvia Razgova \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
The new commissary kitchen could help scale up their airport outposts and prepackaged food businesses, including meal kits available for local pickup, and meals that ship nationally through companies such as Goldbelly. They\u2019re interested in diversifying into preparing meals for local schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think trying to fix Socalo, or get it figured out, has taken a lot of our energies,\u201d Milliken said. \u201cWe want to make sure we\u2019re taking care of the core business that isn\u2019t losing money.\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll be focusing more on Border Grill and BBQ Mexicana in Las Vegas, Alice B. in Palm Springs, their outposts in stadiums and arenas, on events, and on their commercial kitchens\u2019 output.<\/p>\n
L.A. hasn\u2019t seen the last of Feniger and Milliken. Their combination Border Grill and Socalo food trucks will continue catering in the region, serving some of Socalo\u2019s flavors; the salsa macha, they said, will probably be a permanent fixture. Later this year or early next, they plan to open a Border Grill inside Hollywood Burbank Airport. And they\u2019re entertaining the idea of reopening a standalone Border Grill elsewhere in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know if it\u2019s going to happen or when it would happen,\u201d Milliken said, \u201cbut we definitely have some irons in the fire that we\u2019re excited about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Socalo, a modern Mexican restaurant from two of L.A.\u2019s most established chefs, will close next month. Its owners,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7203,69797,69799,69795,2303,48,52,51,58421,47,50,49,69798,14210,69794,26341,17428,69796,69793,5560,72],"class_list":["post-137447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-base","tag-border-grill","tag-chef-susan-feniger","tag-feniger","tag-l-a","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-night","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mary-sue-milliken","tag-meal","tag-milliken","tag-next-month","tag-parking-lot","tag-santa-monica-business","tag-socalo-restaurant","tag-staff","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"SANTA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768635731_98_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n