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Journey of a lifetime
Susanna Foo's passage from homemaking in China to culinary prominence in America
by Theresa Regli
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 In the foreword to chef Susanna Foo's award-winning cookbook, Susanna Foo Chinese Cuisine, author Amy Tan writes about her first experience at Foo's eponymous Philadelphia restaurant:
"The appetizers started to appear. Crab meat dumplings, pinwheel shrimp rolls, honeyed walnuts -- works of edible art, delicately arranged and exquisite to taste or, rather, devour. More dishes arrived: oil-braised artichoke hearts. Artichoke? Is that Chinese? It certainly had all the subtlety and flavor of Chinese food."
This perfect harmony of subtlety and boldness, French and Chinese techniques, and European and Asian ingredients has led Susanna Foo to culinary preeminence in America. But while during the last dozen years she has been named one of the ten best chefs in America by Food & Wine, won two James Beard awards (Best chef in the Northeast and Best International Cookbook), and received the highest scores of any Chinese restaurant in the US in the best-selling Zagat restaurant survey, her success has not come quickly or easily.
Susanna, whose birth name is Su Sui-Lan, was born in Inner Mongolia to parents who ate simple northern Chinese food, mostly dumplings. Daughter of a Lieutenant General, she moved around a lot as a child, enabling her to discover the many regional foods of China; but she never dreamed of a professional cooking career because, as she points out, women in China couldn't become chefs. She and her husband, E-Hsin Foo, moved to America in 1966. Years later, when her in-law's neighborhood restaurant was failing, Susanna took over the kitchen.
And then, Susanna Foo was "discovered" by the culinary world's equivalent of a Hollywood booking agent: Jacob Rosenthal, founder of the Culinary Institute of America. He insisted that she spend a few weeks at the Institute, which she did. She describes her discovery of kitchen equipment (beyond woks) and techniques (beyond stir-fry and steaming) as "a chapter out of Alice in Wonderland." Soon after she returned to Philadelphia, as they say in showbiz, a star was born.
Susanna dedicated her cookbook: "To Jacob Rosenthal, who changed my life." But certainly she has the talent, flair and courage to let that change happen.
Next page | "There's no woman that's a chef."
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Meet award-winnng chef Susanna Foo in this video clip.
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Susanna Foo
;)
