FENIGER/MILLIKEN RESTAURANTS
Alice B.: 1122 E. Tahquitz Canyon Way, Palm Springs. aliceb.com.
BBQ Mexicana: 8480 W. Sunset Road, No. 200, Las Vegas. bordergrill.com/bbqmexicana.
Border Grill: 3950 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las
Pacha Mamas: Allegiant Stadium, 3333 Al Davis Way, Las Vegas; T-Mobile Arena, 3780 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas. bordergrill.com/pacha-mamas.
Socalo: 1920 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica. socalo.com.
a screening at the Palm Springs Film Festival accompanied by a dinner at Alice B. The menu, featuring chicken cutlet with crisp smashed potatoes, was by the restaurant’s executive chef, Lance Velasquez.
Alice B. takes Feniger and Milliken back to their roots, according to Velasquez, who called the menu California-leaning in a separate interview.
“The whole focus is organic, freshly sourced produce, meats, poultry and fish. We feel like we start with the best ingredients that we can. It’s hard to go wrong. Mary Sue was talking with me the other day and she reminded me that that’s how they started when they started City years ago. It’s really interesting that this particular concept has gone full circle.”
Alice B. was named after Alice B. Toklas, the life partner of writer Gertrude Stein and author of a cookbook. The couple lived in Paris, where their home was a gathering place for authors and filled with artwork by the likes of Pablo Picasso.
“Alice B. Toklas was a very famous foodie and one of the earliest influencers ever with her longtime partner Gertrude Stein,” said Feniger. “It seemed like a beautiful way to honor a very famous lesbian couple who did things that were really cool. We loved that idea of gathering creative people.”
The restaurant is off the lobby of Living Out Palm Springs, the downtown apartment complex created for active LGBTQ+, 55-or-older adults, according to its website. Its public spaces are decorated with works by local artists, as is Alice B.
Feniger and Milliken said they gave Velasquez free rein to create the menu for Alice B., which is seasonal and changes nightly.
He is originally from the Bay Area but learned Southern cooking while working in Atlanta. He and his wife moved to the Coachella Valley three years ago, and he said he has a sense of what locals like to eat.
Popular dinner items include lamb shank, cauliflower leek soup and his signature cornmeal cheddar drop biscuits.
“I love baking the biscuits. I bake them every day, five days a week, about 300 biscuits a day.”
His personal favorite is the hamburger on the bar menu.
“It’s freshly ground chuck and it’s served with a homemade English muffin, special sauce, shredded lettuce, American cheese. It’s very Americano but it is delicious.”
Feniger and Milliken have done catering in the Coachella Valley, and they appeared at the Indio International Tamale Festival in 1997 and the Coachella Valley Music and Art Festival in 2019.
“We’ve explored this area. We think there’s great potential. We’re dying to do catering out here, and now that we have a base out here it will make it even easier,” said Feniger.
“The idea of it not being Mexican, it being someplace where someone could come down and get a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup or a burger on a homemade English muffin, someone could come down three days a week and eat that,” she said of Alice B.
“We got a little bit pigeonholed with our TV show, ‘Cooking With Too Hot Tamales,’ ” said Milliken. “We wanted Alice B. to have a menu that was something you couldn’t resist and you wanted to eat all the time and was very healthy and made you feel really good. We’re much more leaning toward the Mediterranean diet. I think a lot of people in Palm Springs are very conscious of their health, so the Mediterranean diet is a great place to start. Also it’s a huge love of ours.”
Loving Las Vegas
BBQ Mexicana, which Feniger recently bragged about in Facebook Reels, is one of several offshoots of Border Grill in Las Vegas.
“It’s a fast casual with a lot of smoked meats, especially burnt end burritos, which are made from the ends of briskets that are smoked for 14 hours, coated in black pepper and super tasty,” said Milliken.
Feniger and Milliken said it’s important to connect with their communities, whether in Los Angeles, Las Vegas or Palm Springs.
“From the very beginning in Vegas, and at all of our restaurants, is that you always want to treat the people that are coming like they are your neighbors, whether they come once a year or three times a year if they live close by and they come weekly,” said Feniger.
“We want the place to always feel like it’s somebody’s home.”