Foo emphasized that the impending sale was not tied to an economy that has staggered many other white-tablecloth restaurants but was driven by a desire to improve her quality of life while she still had the "energy of someone 20 years younger."
She plans to focus on her Radnor restaurant, Susanna Foo Gourmet Kitchen, which she opened near the Blue Route on Lancaster Avenue in 2006 as a more contemporary restaurant than the sedate Center City original. A 10-minute walk from the Villanova home she shares with her husband, E-Hsin, the Radnor restaurant is run by her son Gabriel.
"I want to do cooking classes," said Foo, who has hosted the occasional lesson while turning out two award-winning cookbooks. "There are a lot of things I can't do now." Then there are her granddaughters. Her son Jimmy, his wife, and their two toddlers soon will move from Center City to the Main Line, she said.
Given her two restaurants as well as Suilan - a restaurant she operated from 2003 through 2006 at the Borgata Hotel Casino in Atlantic City - Foo has worked six- and seven-day weeks since 1979.
The work paid off in major awards from such magazines as Gourmet and Food & Wine, the James Beard Foundation, and the Mobil and AAA travel guides.
The building, a World War I-era Italianate brownstone at Sydenham Street, will be configured for retail with apartments above, said Larry Steinberg, a principal of Michael Salove Co., a commercial real estate firm.
Steinberg plans to market two floors on behalf of the prospective buyer, whom he declined to identify. The listing and the purchase price are also confidential until settlement in August.
The Foos paid $750,000 for the building in 1991, according to city records. Real estate watchers said the sale price could be nearly seven times that.
