Sylvia Wu, whose famous Southern California restaurant drew Hollywood’s biggest stars for four decades, has died at the age of 106, reports the LA Times.
Madame Wu’s Garden on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica became a dining destination shortly after it opened in 1959, known for its cuisine and pagoda-style decor with jade statues, a stone waterfall, and a koi-filled fountain.
Wu herself was known for wearing a floor-length silk gown as she took turns greeting Hollywood’s elite and picking up the phone to take takeout orders. She died on September 19.
She was inspired to open the restaurant after arriving from China and only finding heavy faux Cantonese dishes. “Chop suey everywhere,” she complained to USA Today. “All you see are chop suey houses.”
At Madame Wu’s Garden, Mae West preferred the cold melon soup, Gregory Peck and Paul Newman enjoyed the shrimp toast and crab puffs, while Princess Grace of Monaco preferred the roast Peking duck, according to the LA Times.
“Everyone in this town knows Madame Wu,” the late TV host Merv Griffin once told the newspaper. “One of the loveliest, sweetest and most elegant women I have ever known.”
Sylvia Wu and actor Dustin Nguyen attend the 1988 Epicurean Gala at the California Institute for Cancer Research. Photo: Ron Galella Collection/Getty ImagesShe immediately regretted closing the restaurant in 1998 and opened Madame Wu’s Asian Bistro & Sushi. This restaurant didn’t last long, but affection for Wu lingered. When she turned 100 in 2014, her old customers filled a hotel ballroom for her birthday party.
Born Sylvia Cheng on October 24, 1915, Wu grew up in Jiujiang, a town southwest of Shanghai, where she learned to cook while watching the maid prepare meals for her wealthy family.
The family moved to Shanghai and then to Hong Kong. During World War II, she took an ocean liner to New York City.
“I don’t know where I got the courage from,” she later recalled. “I had no family in America. The journey took 40 days and because of the war the whole route was blacked out.”
While studying education at Columbia University, she met the successful chemist King Yan Wu. They married, had three children and moved to LA where he took a job as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co and she became a restaurateur.
Wu also wrote cookbooks, appeared regularly on television, and was involved in charitable causes, most notably the City of Hope Cancer Center after her daughter Loretta died of breast cancer at age 34.
According to the LA Times, Wu is survived by sons George and Patrick and numerous grandchildren. Her husband died in 2011. The two were married for 67 years.