Madame Wu, restaurateur to Hollywood's elite, dies at 106 | World Information
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Sylvia Wu, whose famed Southern California restaurant drew Hollywood's largest stars for 4 a long time, has died at age 106, in keeping with a information report.
Madame Wu’s Backyard on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica turned a eating vacation spot shortly after it opened in 1959, fashionable 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 carrying a floor-length silk robe whereas alternately greeting Tinseltown's elite and selecting up the cellphone to take to-go orders.
She died Sept. 19, the Los Angeles Occasions reported Saturday.
Madame Wu mentioned she was impressed to open the restaurant after arriving from China and discovering solely heavy faux-Cantonese dishes.
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“Chop suey in every single place,” she complained to USA As we speak. “All you see are chop suey homes.”
At Madame Wu's Backyard, Mae West favored 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 keeping with the Los Angeles Occasions.
“Everyone on this city is aware of Madame Wu,” the late tv host Merv Griffin as soon as instructed the newspaper. “One of many dearest, sweetest, most elegant ladies 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 When she turned 100 in 2014, her outdated clients crammed up a lodge ballroom for her celebration.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. Throughout World Conflict II, she took an ocean liner to New York Metropolis.
“I don’t understand how I had the braveness,” she later recalled. “I had no household in America. The journey took 40 days, and due to the battle there was a blackout all the way in which.”
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Whereas pursuing an training diploma at Columbia College, she met King Yan Wu, a profitable chemist. They married, had three kids and moved to LA, the place he took an engineering job at Hughes Plane Co. and he or she turned a restaurateur.
She additionally wrote cookbooks, appeared often on tv and have become lively with charity work, significantly at Metropolis of Hope most cancers heart 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 keeping with the Los Angeles Occasions. Her husband died in 2011. The 2 had been married 67 years.
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