Her hunger for bold, exciting flavors started in her mother’s
kitchen, where her mom, “a great cook,” would make comfort-food
classics like lasagna, brisket, cheese dreams, fudge, and icebox cake.
In high school, Feniger traveled to Israel, where she ate baba
ghanouj, falafel, and halvah for the first time. Eventually, she
attended the Culinary Institute of America in New York and got a
job working at the original Quilted Giraffe upstate. “It wasn’t
enough for me, though,” she says, “because I wasn’t learning
enough.”
After working in Kansas, she moved to Chicago, where she met
Milliken at Le Perroquet. “Nothing got thrown out there,” she tells
me. “We’d use butter wrappers like wax paper, to cover the
pastry cream; we’d use the fat from chicken stock, clarify it, and
use it to sauté; we’d use the stems from broccoli to make mousse.”
She exhibits the same enthusiasm for her latest obsession: street
food, which she features at her restaurant, Street.
Those Manila clams, made fiery with a strong dose of black
pepper and joined by garlic, ginger, soy sauce, brown sugar, and
lime, are poured into a bowl and then covered with a handful of
fresh herbs. “Oh my God,” says Feniger, stirring it all around.
“It’s so fantastic when it’s mixed in there.”
The flavor is explosive. “It’s that sweet salty thing that I love,”
she cheers.
The intensity is matched by the intensity of her kafta—lamb
meatballs—served with baked feta cheese and drizzled with
pomegranate molasses. And it’s matched by the kaya, which is