Madame Wu, restaurateur who served Chinese food to Hollywood’s elite, dies at 106

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Sylvia Wu, whose famed Southern California restaurant drew Hollywood’s largest stars for 4 many years, has died at age 106, in accordance to a information report.

Madame Wu’s Garden on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica turned a eating vacation spot shortly after it opened in 1959, well-liked for its delicacies and pagoda-style decor that includes jade statues, a stone waterfall and a koi-filled fountain.

Madame Wu herself was identified for sporting a floor-length silk robe whereas alternately greeting Tinseltown’s elite and selecting up the telephone to take to-go orders.

She died Sept 19, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Madame Wu mentioned she was impressed to open the restaurant after arriving from China and discovering solely heavy faux-Cantonese dishes.

“Chop suey in every single place,” she complained to USA Today. “All you see are chop suey homes.”

At Madame Wu’s Garden, Mae West favoured the chilly melon soup, Gregory Peck and Paul Newman loved the shrimp toast and crab puffs, whereas Princess Grace of Monaco most popular the Peking roast duck, in accordance to the Los Angeles Times.

“Everybody on this city is aware of Madame Wu,” the late tv host Merv Griffin as soon as instructed the newspaper. “One of the dearest, sweetest, most elegant girls I’ve ever identified.”

After she closed the restaurant in 1998, she instantly regretted the choice and opened Madame Wu’s Asian Bistro & Sushi. That restaurant did not final, however affection for Madame Wu continued. When she turned 100 in 2014, her previous clients stuffed up a resort ballroom for her celebration.

Born Sylvia Cheng on Oct. 24, 1915, she grew up in Jiujiang, a metropolis southwest of Shanghai the place she discovered to cook dinner whereas watching the maid put together meals for her well-to-do household.

The household moved to Shanghai after which Hong Kong. During World War II, she took an ocean liner to New York City.

“I don’t know the way I had the braveness,” she later recalled. “I had no household in America. The journey took 40 days, and due to the warfare there was a blackout all the best way.”

While pursuing an schooling diploma at Columbia University, she met King Yan Wu, a profitable chemist. They married, had three youngsters and moved to Los Angeles, the place he took an engineering job at Hughes Aircraft Co and she or he turned a restaurateur.

She additionally wrote cookbooks, appeared frequently on tv and have become lively with charity work, significantly at City of Hope most cancers centre after her daughter, Loretta, died of breast most cancers at 34.

Wu is survived by sons George and Patrick and quite a few grandchildren, in accordance to the Los Angeles Times. Her husband died in 2011. The two had been married 67 years. – AP



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