Abstract. Let G be a locally compact group, A(G) its Fourier algebra and L 1 (G) the space of Haar integrable functions on G. We study the Segal algebra S 1 A(G) = A(G) ∩ L 1 (G) in A(G). It admits an operator space structure which makes it a completely contractive Banach algebra. We compute the dual space of S 1 A(G). We use it to show that the restriction operator u → u| H : S 1 A(G) → A(H), for some non-open closed subgroups H, is a surjective complete quotient map. We also show that if N is a non-compact closed subgroup, then the averaging operator,is a surjective complete quotient map. This puts an operator space perspective on the philosophy that S 1 A(G) is "locally A(G) while globally L 1 ". Also, using the operator space structure we can show that S 1 A(G) is operator amenable exactly when when G is compact; and we can show that it is always operator weakly amenable. To obtain the latter fact, we use E. Samei's theory of hyper-Tauberian Banach algebras.1. Operator Segal algebras 1.1. Notation. For any Banach space X we let B(X ) denote the Banach algebra of bounded linear operators from X to itself, and b 1 (X ) the set of all vectors of norm not exceeding 1.For details on classical harmonic analysis, we use [15,23]. We will always let G denote a locally compact group with a fixed left invariant Haar measure m.is the usual L p -space with respect to m. If f, g are Borel measurable functions and s ∈ G, then for almost every t in G we denote bythe left group action, convolution (when the integrand makes sense) and inversion. We note that L 1 (G) is a Banach algebra with respect to convolution. We let A(G) and B(G) denote the Fourier and Fourier-Stieltjes algebras of G, which are Banach algebras of continuous functions on G and were introduced in [7]. We recall, from that article, that A(G) consists exactly of functions on G of the form u(s) = λ(s)f | g = g * f (s), where λ : G → B(L 2 (G)) is the left regular representation given by λ(s)f = s * f . The dual of A(G) is the von Neumann algebra VN(G), which is generated by λ(G) in B(L 2 (G)).Our standard references for operator spaces are [6,22]. An operator space is a complex Banach space V equipped with an operator space structure: for each space of matrices M n (V) with entries in V, n ∈ N, we have a norm · M n (V) , and the norms satisfy Ruan's axioms in addition to that · M 1 (V) is the norm on V = M 1 (V). A map T from V to another operator space W is said to be completely bounded if the family of linear operatorsis uniformly bounded over n. If A is an algebra and an operator space for which V is a left module over A, we say V is a completely bounded A-module if there is C > 0 so that for eachWe say V is a completely contractive A-module if we can set C = 1. This is the same as asserting that the module multiplication extends to a map on the operator projective tensor product A ⊗ V → V and is bounded at all matrix levels by C. We say A is a completely bounded (contractive) Banach algebra if it itself is a completely bounded (contractive) A-module. We n...