Career

Since 1979 Susanna Foo has been redefining Chinese cuisine.  She doesn’t believe that authenticity and improvisation are incompatible, and she doesn’t wish to be hemmed in by national or regional boundaries.  Armed with a deep understanding and knowledge of both regional Chinese cooking traditions and the techniques of other international cuisines, she has changed the paradigm of Chinese food through the melding of the best and fresh ingredients with modern and traditional cooking techniques.

Susanna was born in Inner Mongolia, China.  Her family moved to Shanxi province when she was still a young child. Her father Yang Chi Su was a Lieutenant General in the Republic of China Marine Corps.  At age 5 she and her family moved to Taiwan where she grew up.  While attending the National Taiwan University and studying for a bachelor’s degree in European history, she met her future husband E-Hsin Foo.  Together they moved to the United States.  He studied for his Ph.D. at Carnegie-Mellon University in Metallurgical and Material Science. In the meantime, Susanna got her master’s degree in Library Science at the University of Pittsburg.  They married in 1966.

During Susanna’s time in Taiwan, she learned Shanxi home cooking from her grandmother and her cousin.  Her mother-in-law taught her Hunan cooking.  She also took several cooking classes with Fu Pei May in Taiwan prior to traveling to the United States.  These early culinary experiences would form the basis of her future culinary adventures.

E-Hsin and Susanna moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1979 to help his family run the Center City branch of HuNan, a neighborhood Chinese restaurant. Prior to this, Susanna had never worked in a professional kitchen.  It was at Hunan that Susanna met one of the most influential people in her life, Jacob Rosenthal Founder of the Culinary Institute of America.  He dined regularly at the restaurant and saw untapped potential in Susanna.  He arranged for her to dine at many best restaurants in New York City, and later in Paris.  He also recommended that she study at the Culinary Institute of America where she learned the French techniques that would later adapt to Chinese cuisine.  She would later dedicate her first cookbook to Rosenthal, saying that he changed her life.

In 1987, she opened the eponymous Susanna Foo Chinese Cuisine, serving a fusion of Chinese and French cuisine. It named the best new restaurant of the year by Esquire Magazine, and Food & Wine magazine named her the best new chef in 1989. 

In 1995, her first book was published, entitled Susanna Foo Chinese Cuisine:  The Fabulous Flavors and Innovative Recipes of North America’s Finest Chinese Cook. This won her a James Bread Foundation Award for a best international cookbook, and she won a second James Bread Foundation Award in 1997 for the Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic region.  

She opened a new restaurant, named Suilan, in the Borgata, a hotel and casino complex, in Atlantic City in 2003.  A second book followed in 2005, Susanna Foo: Fresh Inspiration. She won the best Asian Cuisine book by Gourmand International Cookbook Award.

In 2009, she made the decision to sell Susanna Foo Chinese Cuisine after her husband had fallen ill. E-Hsin Foo died a year later.  Susanna had another restaurant, Susanna Foo Gourmet Kitchen in Radnor, Pennsylvania which was closer to her home and which she ran until it closed in 2015.

At the age of 72, Foo came out of retirement in 2016 to open a new restaurant, SUGA, with her son Gabriel.  He had wanted to open a restaurant, and Foo felt that she was not yet finished with demonstrating modern Chinese cuisine.  Some of the dishes were an evolution from those served in her previous restaurant, while others were inspired by her frequent trips to China.  In August 2019 her other son, James Foo died from ALS.  She decided to retire and donate her time to consulting, teaching cooking, and fundraising for the fight against ALS and for The Free Library of Philadelphia.