Socalo, a modern Mexican restaurant from two of Los Angeles' most established chefs, will close next month. Its owners, Border Grill founders Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, announced plans to close the Santa Monica business to staff Friday afternoon, citing losses due to the pandemic, the 2025 wildfires and more.
“Combined with skyrocketing prices, labor shortages, immigration raids and uncertainty and fear of recession, we've been losing money for a year and a half or more,” Milliken said in an interview. “We just can't afford to do that anymore.”
It marks one of the first notable restaurant closings in 2026, after a year of more than 100, and many chefs and restaurateurs cited the same factors.
Socalo opened in late 2019 at the base of the Gateway Hotel on Santa Monica Boulevard. Feniger and Milliken considered opening a new version of their most famous chain, Border Grill, but opted to launch a new concept. Socalo debuted as a more southern take on Mexican food, with executive chef Giovanni López heading the kitchen and a menu that included crispy chicken skin with homemade tagine, lamb birria, a variety of tacos and hearty margaritas.
“Everyone thought maybe it was a smart move to refresh the brand,” Feniger said.
Susan Feniger, left, and Mary Sue Milliken photographed in the Socalo kitchen in 2019.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
The couple behind Mundo Hospitality Group, numerous cookbooks and the Food Network show “Too Hot Tamales,” helped popularize Mexican cuisine during the 1980s and 1990s, and encouraged much of the country to embrace cuisine beyond Tex-Mex stereotypes.
“They explored regional Mexican cuisine a decade before the idea became fashionable,” Jonathan Gold wrote in awarding them the second annual Gold Award in 2018.
Socalo earned sustained praise, including a more recent nod in the LA Times' guide to the best tacos in Los Angeles.
But he endured years of hardship. It opened less than three months before the global COVID outbreak. According to Milliken, it stayed afloat for the next two and a half years thanks to federal aid and operational pivots, and for a time things seemed almost rosy. But as restaurants reopened and a sense of normalcy returned, many of Santa Monica's office workers remained remote, a customer base the duo said they needed to continue. At first, they were inundated with local labor during happy hours and Friday after-hours service. It never bounced.
Entertainment industry strikes further hurt sales, and the January 2025 wildfires reduced local customer visits by 30% to 50%.
They tried to supplement the losses by attending to studios, launching a monthly series of storytelling events, and reducing lunch prices. But they couldn't make the numbers work.
Socalo will receive its last guests on Valentine's Day.
When downtown City Restaurant closed in 1994, Feniger and Milliken made the most of it: The day after their last night of service, they threw a big party in the parking lot, served champagne, hired a live band, and sold the restaurant's furniture and other belongings in a sort of garage sale. They hope the Socalo finale on February 14 will feel as much like a “celebration of life,” and while they haven't finalized the menu or entertainment, they hope it will be lively and, as befits the holiday, full of love.
Socalo's interior featured dichroic lighting fixtures, custom cherry wood tables and booths.
(Mel Melcón / Los Angeles Times)
“It was very important for us to maintain a presence in Santa Monica because it has been a very important part of our lives,” Feniger said. “I think that's why we've held on even as we've seen several of our peers go out of business over the last three years in Santa Monica. We kept hoping we could turn that corner, at least break even. But a lot of that is also because we feel a great responsibility to the team and the people who work for us.”
The owners alerted Socalo staff on Friday afternoon, a month in advance of the closure. Even before the announcement, they said, they began making calls to other restaurateurs to identify potential job opportunities for staff.
They currently run a commissary kitchen, which could hire some members of their Socalo team and serves as a base to combat food insecurity by preparing and delivering meals to eight homeless shelters in Los Angeles. In March they plan to open an even larger commissary kitchen, which they hope will diversify their business and staff more staff.
“We realized that the industry is changing a lot, and specifically independent restaurants. The financial equation is becoming more and more strict and difficult,” Feniger said.
Socalo pipian enchiladas
(Silvia Razgova / Los Angeles Times)
The commissary's new kitchen could help expand its airport outposts and prepackaged food businesses, including meal kits available for local pickup and meals that ship nationally through companies like Goldbelly. They are interested in branching out and preparing meals for local schools.
“I think trying to fix Socalo, or figure it out, has consumed a lot of our energy,” Milliken said. “We want to make sure we take care of the core business which is not losing money.”
They will focus more on Border Grill and Mexican BBQ in Las Vegas, Alice B. in Palm Springs, their stadium and arena outposts, at events and on the production of their commercial kitchens.
Los Angeles hasn't seen the last of Feniger and Milliken. Their Border Grill and Socalo food truck combination will continue to provide catering services in the region, serving some of the flavors of Socalo; salsa macha, they said, will likely be a permanent fixture. Later this year or early next year, they plan to open a Border Grill inside Hollywood Burbank Airport. And they are considering the idea of reopening a free-standing Border Grill in another part of the city.
“We don't know if it's going to happen or when it's going to happen,” Milliken said, “but we definitely have some issues we're excited about.”
