Hospitality Management
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Allen Susser |
Allen Susser Allen Susser remembers the Brooklyn of his childhood as a place that loved "the celebration and warmth of food." Knowing his destiny when he saw it, Susser embraced a culinary career early on and has never wavered.
By 1976, he had cooked his way through the New York City College of Technology Restaurant Management School at the top of his class, receiving the Ward Arbury Award. The years immediately after were spent absorbing classic French cooking and discipline, both at the Bristol Hotel in Paris and at Le Cirque in New York. This, he says, gave him "balance and respect for foods."
For all the wonders of these two great cities, Susser felt himself drawn to the warmth of Miami and what was then undiscovered culinary territory. As a chef at the elegant Turnberry Isle Resort, he began to explore the native foods of south Florida, combining fresh local fish with tropical fruits.
In 1986, Susser opened his own place, Chef Allen's. Crisp, satisfying and refreshing are some of the adjectives Susser uses to describe what he's about in the kitchen, where his cooking is defined as New World cuisine.
The Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States are all sources for Susser's pantry, which includes fruits such as mango, and star fruit, fish such as cobia, wahoo and pompano, Scotch bonnet chilies, saffron, vanilla, and rum. In his spare time, Susser picked up another degree, with honors, at the Florida International University School of Hospitality Management, and stayed on to teach classes.
As first Miami and then the rest of the world began to appreciate this new cuisine, Susser built up his press scrapbook. Laudatory pieces came in from Food & Wine, which named him best new chef in America in 1991, and from Time magazine, which proclaimed his Florida cuisine "a New World marvel." In the New York Times, Bryan Miller called Susser "the Ponce de Leon of New Floridian Cooking."
Joining chefs around the country, Susser
takes time to help feed the homeless and the homebound elderly.
He chairs both SOS Taste of the Nation and the Miami branch of Meals
on Wheels. As he puts it: "I love to cook. I make food my hobby,
my profession, and my charity." For Allen Susser, all three
begin at home.
