It was at the first Hu-Nan - where the family was struggling desperately for business - that Foo met a man who changed her life.
He was Jacob Rosenthal, the retired president of the Culinary Institute of America.
He lived in an apartment a few blocks away, and (as the story goes) was impressed by Hu-Nan's fresh dishes.
He took Foo under his wing, arranged for a friend to come to Hu-Nan to teach her how to make French stocks and sauces, "how to brown bones for added flavor."
In the winter of 1981, she attended the Culinary Institute of America herself, and the rest is history: She would forgo sharp rice vinegars, she writes, replacing them with balsamic vinegar, closer to the complex flavor of the black vinegar of her youth.
She reveled in the joys of good olive oil, employing it instead of peanut and sesame oils in lighter dishes.
She found that vodka, gin, and vermouth married well with shellfish and white meat.
Yet the day after closing Susanna Foo, the family dinner she cooked in her Radnor kitchen made no pretense at innovation; it was a sauce of pork, honey and garlic, chunked with potato and tomatoes, over homemade pasta - soul food straight out of the tradition of her native northern China.
"Maybe this is the life I should have," she said afterward. "But maybe in two years, I'm tired of this."
Contact columnist Rick Nichols at 215-854-2715 or rnichols@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/ricknichols.
