Feature Article |
Susanna's Perfect Storm
What made restaurant icon Susanna Foo get into a bizarre altercation with a meter maid last fall and end up in jail? For the first time, Foo tells her side of the story, and opens up about how the incident has changed her
By Amy Donohue Korman
- Photo by Ben Leuner
IT WAS A Friday night in September, and normally Susanna Foo would have been in the kitchen of her glossy, pale-hued Walnut Street restaurant, emerging from time to time to chat with customers — customers who were happy to pay up to $31 a plate for dishes like her famous Mongolian lamb or crispy whole black bass. Instead, the famous chef was alone, confused and frightened as she sat waiting in a barren cell at the Philadelphia Roundhouse. This was a place she could never have pictured herself — nothing in her childhood spent playing in the lotus fields of Taiwan or in her unusual trajectory to culinary superstardom could have prepared Foo for that night last fall. Foo, 63, was waiting to be arraigned after an altercation with a Philadelphia Parking Authority meter maid outside her restaurant. The meter maid told police that the restaurateur had struck her, and before Foo could really even comprehend what was happening, she had been handcuffed, fingerprinted, and placed in a cell with two other women, one of whom turned violent and hit her.
The woman was moved to a different cell in the Roundhouse while Foo was literally given bread and water to eat. “If you aren’t lucky, you could be buried there for a long time,” says Foo. “No one talks to you or tells you what’s going to happen.” When she asked to call her husband, she says, an officer told her to shut up. There she sat all night long, terrified and in shock, until about 9:30 the next morning, when she was let out on her own signature after a preliminary arraignment. But even as she was leaving, a police officer made it clear her ordeal wasn’t over.
“Hey, Susanna, we didn’t realize you were famous,” he said to her. “The newspapers are calling.” That day, Foo was on the cover of the Daily News.
It was the worst point of a stress-and-grief-filled year for the culinary icon, who is quiet and has a serious and kindly air. Last fall she had just lost both of her beloved parents and was preparing to close her Atlantic City restaurant while getting ready to launch another one on the Main Line. While she mourned her mother and father, she was working hours that would exhaust someone half her age, and had little time to rest or see family or friends.
Still, the Zsa Zsa Gabor-ish incident seemed unlikely and beyond bizarre for the reserved chef, who acknowledges that there was a verbal altercation, but says she did not strike the ticket-writer, Juanita Lewis. “I knew that it couldn’t be true,” says Jim Foo, Susanna’s son, who works for a hedge fund company. “She does lose her temper, but she would never hit anyone.” And clearly, the whole incident is the sort of thing that Foo couldn’t have imagined happening — when she describes it, it’s as if she’s talking about a very bad dream, something that someone else experienced on that strange Friday afternoon. “In your lifetime, you never know what is going to happen,” she says.
The woman was moved to a different cell in the Roundhouse while Foo was literally given bread and water to eat. “If you aren’t lucky, you could be buried there for a long time,” says Foo. “No one talks to you or tells you what’s going to happen.” When she asked to call her husband, she says, an officer told her to shut up. There she sat all night long, terrified and in shock, until about 9:30 the next morning, when she was let out on her own signature after a preliminary arraignment. But even as she was leaving, a police officer made it clear her ordeal wasn’t over.
“Hey, Susanna, we didn’t realize you were famous,” he said to her. “The newspapers are calling.” That day, Foo was on the cover of the Daily News.
It was the worst point of a stress-and-grief-filled year for the culinary icon, who is quiet and has a serious and kindly air. Last fall she had just lost both of her beloved parents and was preparing to close her Atlantic City restaurant while getting ready to launch another one on the Main Line. While she mourned her mother and father, she was working hours that would exhaust someone half her age, and had little time to rest or see family or friends.
Still, the Zsa Zsa Gabor-ish incident seemed unlikely and beyond bizarre for the reserved chef, who acknowledges that there was a verbal altercation, but says she did not strike the ticket-writer, Juanita Lewis. “I knew that it couldn’t be true,” says Jim Foo, Susanna’s son, who works for a hedge fund company. “She does lose her temper, but she would never hit anyone.” And clearly, the whole incident is the sort of thing that Foo couldn’t have imagined happening — when she describes it, it’s as if she’s talking about a very bad dream, something that someone else experienced on that strange Friday afternoon. “In your lifetime, you never know what is going to happen,” she says.
 |
Change text size |
 |
Print |
 |
Email |
 |
Write a comment |
User comments
- No users have posted comments on this article.
