A Feast For The Senses

Perched on a stool at the kitchen counter of exuberant Su-yen Thornhill’s popular weekly pop-up restaurant, Chéz Fong, in Johannesburg, I am completely captivated. As much a performer as she is a cook, Su-yen lively banter makes for a gloriously entertaining dinner

- Robyn Timson Moss

Eccentric Su-yen was born in Hong Kong in 1974 to a Chinese mother, Fanny, and ScottishSouth African father, Michael Thornhill. Her youth was brimming with culinary culture. “Mom is a cook. She always cooked, and tells us she was trained by some Cordon Bleu dude at some point. She’s very strict with her recipes, so she gets a bit stroppy with me when I just throw together whatever I feel like. She cooks Cantonese food, but also has very good European knowledge, so we had a full range growing up. Never fusion though – if it was English, it was English; if it was French, it was French.”

Su-yen’s not-so-accidental foray into cooking started early on in her life, when her mother lay down and announced dramatically: “I’m going to die now and when I die, your father is going to get snared by some awful woman from the golf club, and she’s going to become your stepmother; then you’re going to have to cook for her, so you better learn to cook to keep your father safe.” Taking all this very seriously, eight-year-old Su-yen went bolting downstairs to find a cookbook. She flicked to chocolate cake, pizza and Bolognese recipes, and proceeded to feed these to her father for the weeks that followed. It turned out he was allergic to both chocolate and cheese. Luckily, in the nick of time, her mother made a miraculous recovery, rose from her bed and exclaimed: “What are you doing? You make such a mess of my kitchen!” All was well again, and Suyen has loved cooking ever since.