A tall, beautiful Chinese man with a long ponytail got on a Cathay Pacific plane in Hong Kong on May 15. He went to the first-class cabin, took two sleeping pills, put his seat back all the way, and slept for 20 hours, till the big silver bird dropped down out of the sky over Toronto, his chosen home town. A first-class ticket between Toronto and Hong Kong costs $9,328 on Cathay Pacific. How many Toronto chefs can afford to buy that?
Susur Lee.
He's the man. What other Toronto chef has cooked at New York's epicurean mecca, the James Beard House? Been offered the sun, the moon and the stars by De Niro (i.e. full financial backing to open a restaurant in the Big Apple)? That was before Susur's three-year stint consulting to the highest-end restaurants in Singapore. After closing the tiny delectable Lotus in 1997, Susur became the first Toronto chef to cut a swath on the international cooking stage. Lionized by Bon Appétit, the bible du jour of foodies, paid the big bucks every time he picked up a knife, Susur could write his own ticket.
And he wrote it all the way home to Toronto. Manhattan looked great professionally, but he and his wife preferred to raise their children here. Last spring, having made that choice, Susur bought Ciccone's, an old-fashioned Italian restaurant at King and Portland streets, and set about gutting it. The Hong King trip in May was about tableware: Hand-sculpted teak candleholders from Indonesia; pristine white porcelain from Singapore; cutlery with handles like a silver bullet. This was to be Susur's very personal statement of taste, every detail chosen with care, the result of a mature aesthetic with money to burn.
Grown up, yes. Well-endowed financially, to be sure, thanks to an anonymous backer. But Susur is still a funky guy, more Queen Street than uptown, the chef who rode his bicycle to Kensington Market every morning in search of that day's exotic inspiration. Which explains the new restaurant's face on the world: He left Ciccone's Fifites white awnings and its red neon sign: "Restaurant." The only decoration in the dining room, save flowers, is a parade of small icons to pop culture, including the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man. As if to say: This is the best cooking in town, but leave the stuffed shirt at home.
Susur's sojourns in Asia brought him home (he grew up in Hong Kong), in terms of ingredients. His cooking remains a finely wrought East/West fusion, but with increasing reliance on Chinese ingredients. Spectacular steamed custard ( à la Japan's chawan mushi) has a "roof" of barely cooked spinach, and sits atop cold shrimp, piquant with mega-garlic, and meaty fresh wild mushrooms stewed with dashi (Japanese dried-fish stock). The sauce is brown, but what a brown sauce: That one sauce expresses Susur's classic French training and Oriental spin in every slurp: It's lighter and more complex than a French sauce, yet every bit as silken.
Silken like his decadent twins, terrine and mousse of foie gras with soy-scented aspic, and poached raisins and olives for sweet/tart counterpoint. Smooth like his yin-yang mousses of smoked salmon and wasabi atop hot-smoked salmon, beside raw-tuna slices strewn with thin medallions of lightly pickled daikon and ginger. Susur can be deceptively simple: He has distilled the essence of sweet summer tomato, innocent of red pulp, into broth scented with lemongrass.
As night falls, the all-white pristine dining room reveals its own deceptive simplicity: The lighting changes, and that changes everything. The room's two large recessed squares were bold midnight blue when we sat down. After appetizers, they go lavender pink, which turns the room palest gold by the alchemy of lighting. Does the lighting match the his-'n'-hers sparkly postmodern plexiglass bathroom sinks (blue for boys, pink for girls)? Only Susur knows.
Sweet subtle surprises like that lurk everywhere: Wild sea bass, firm and gilded, sits on a lighter-than-air emulsion of carrot and white miso, innocent of cream but so smooth. Fresh Ontario venison is crusted with black pepper, roasted blood-red tender, sauced with barely there gorgonzola and served atop roasted squash with braised cabbage and gossamer gnocchi flavoured with wild rice. Steamed lobster is served out of the shell, with a play on dim sum: a huge, fresh-made shrimp dumpling bursting with flavour; scattered with paper-thin slices of chorizo sausage afloat in another magical sauce -- purée of garlic whisked with olive oil to form a brief, spectacular creamy emulsion, full of flavour, empty of butter fat. Susur's sole false move is slightly tough duck breast served with too big a garnish of fresh corn bits with bacon, barley and olives in an almost-sweet sauce made with Chinese berry wine.
After main courses, the room changes again: The recessed niches go fuchsia, the rest of the room turns white again. To match the mood of dessert? Sugar and whimsy, as with all Susur's food a perfection of technique walking on the light side. A small scoop of dark chocolate mousse (preferable to almost anything in life) sits in crunchy crust tartlet beside ethereal crème brulee, with fresh peach purée. Chunks of fine gorgonzola cosy up to barely-baked pear atop unbearably, erotically crisp, tender pastry. He goes in further for the kill with a scoop of intense house-made black raspberry sorbet. Scoops of white and dark chocolate mousse come in a pool of sweet almond sauce, a play on the traditional Chinese almond soup dessert. Ceylon tea scent cuts the sweetness of the caramel sauce with wild blueberry tart.
During the days of Lotus (1987-97), epicurean Toronto thought we knew Susur's oeuvre. How wrong we were, for he had only just begun. The three years away from the daily demands of his own restaurant gave him opportunity to reflect. The sojourn in Asia refined his vision. The infusion of serious capital gave him room to manoeuvre, to build a kitchen big enough and sufficiently equipped to support his aesthetic ambition. After the hole in the wall that was Lotus (both dining room and kitchen), the new restaurant is a splendour of understated luxe. The wine list, not a strong point at Lotus, is varied and interesting. Naysayers who oftimes waited too long for food at Lotus worried about the front of the new house living up to Susur's cooking. Fret not: In the years away, he learned a thing of two about restaurant management.
The king is back. Long live the king.
Susur, 601 King St. W., 416-603-2205. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip: $200. Open Monday through Saturday, dinner only. Accessible to people in wheelchairs.