Chef Allen's palette delights the palate

If Allen Susser '78 had become an artist instead of pursuing a culinary career, his inquisitive and adventurous approach undoubtedly would have led to innovative combinations of colors and textures on canvas. Susser, the chef and owner of Chef Allen's in Aventura, approaches food the way a painter chooses oils from a palette, delicately blending pigments to give his work a distinctive character. His "palette" includes ingredients ranging from the more conventional - including fresh fish, beef and poultry - to more exotic elements, such as tropical fruits and Caribbean or Latin American flavorings. He skillfully blends the elements of his palette into dishes of unique culinary artistry.

Susser was instrumental to the creation of New World cuisine, one of the most acclaimed styles of cooking today. While New World cuisine is characterized by regional cultural influences and the flavors of the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe, Susser's roots are strictly Brooklyn. He was born and raised in the New York City borough, coming from a close-knit family in which celebrations and good food were synonymous. Susser grew up in a three-family house: he and his family on the first floor, his grandmother on the second and his aunt on the top. On the second floor he received his early hands-on training.

"I started cooking with my grandmother," Susser recalled. "I'd be in the kitchen turning the hand grinder for her, making little crepes for the blintzes, things like that.

"I just loved being in the kitchen and helping out. I also recognized that there's a certain love in food. Family and food and holidays all went together. People always got together for the holidays, and it was all centered around food. I realized that food was a very important part of family, and I enjoyed that."

From an early age, Susser was set on entering the culinary field. He cooked regularly for his family, and during the summers of his high school years he worked at Rockaway Playland in nearby Queens, cooking hot dogs and hamburgers. He soon found he had a natural talent for tasks that others didn't easily grasp. For instance, while everyone was making one small cotton candy, he could make two large ones at once.

By 1976, Susser had graduated at the top of his class from the New York City Technical College Restaurant Management School. He had also worked at Kutschers, a large resort hotel in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, where he learned the realities of a full-production kitchen and assembling recipes. But he yearned for experience in a world-class kitchen and managed to land an apprenticeship at the esteemed Bristol Hotel in Paris.

"The fine French restaurants were where master chefs really strut their stuff, where they were really showing their talents and abilities from a creative and technical sense, using an exotica of ingredients," Susser said. "In Paris my eyes lit up with what was going on with food." After completing the apprenticeship and traveling throughout Europe, soaking up more culinary influences, Susser moved to Miami to attend FIU's School of Hospitality Management. He graduated from FIU with honors and returned to New York to work at Le Cirque, then and still one of the finest French restaurants in the city.

"Even though I could have worked for one of the numerous restaurant chains that were conducting interviews at FIU, I didn't see that as my path," explained Susser. "Culinary independence was my goal. That's why I went back to the city where food was happening and is still happening. I thought I would open a fine French restaurant, a nice 60-seat place with great food and service, nice ambience, a real classic type of establishment."

New York, however, would not be the locale for his culinary exploits. Susser was drawn back to Miami, where as chef at the Turnberry Isle Resort he began to explore new ways for using and combining fresh, local foodstuffs.

"Working at Turnberry after Le Cirque, I found that the appetite for French cuisine with game birds, heavy terrines - that style of French cooking - at the moment was not so appetizing to South Florida," Susser explained. "But I saw great fresh fish and tropical fruits, and that's what really excited me: the ingredients. In order to create a cuisine you need the ingredients, and looking back to France that's how a cuisine comes about. You need sources for local, natural ingredients. I realized the sources were here, but were just underutilized.

"That opened up a whole new palette of ingredients. Citrus (for example) is great, but not just lemons and limes and oranges, you've got tangerines and kumquats and numerous other citrus. Tropical fruits were available, with mangoes, papayas and guavas. That opened the doors to see how these ingredients are used locally and regionally, which pointed to the Caribbean and Latin America."

In 1986, Susser finally opened Chef Allen's. The 100-seat restaurant has won local, national and international accolades, helping to put Miami in the gourmet limelight. A Miami Herald review printed earlier this year, noted: "Chef Allen's remains among the cream of South Florida dining, at or near the top of the list, managing to package A-1 quality ingredients in ever-interesting ways."

Over the years, Chef Allen's and several other restaurants/chefs that shared similar approaches to cuisine - such as Mark's Place (Mark Militello), Norman's (Norman Van Aken) and Yuca (Douglas Rodriguez) - were in the forefront of developing and popularizing New World cuisine. The chefs dubbed themselves the "Mango Gang."

"One restaurant can have a style of food," Susser noted, "but in order to be larger than that we felt it was necessary to work together where more restaurants and more chefs use similar ingredients and techniques. That's how we came up with New World cuisine. Obviously, though, each of us had a different take on it."

Despite the tremendous success of his restaurant, where he spends five to six nights a week, Susser has not been content just staying in the kitchen. In 1996, he launched Chef Allen's line of products, available at gourmet shops throughout the country. Products include mango ketchup (the most popular of the items, to be used as a dipping or glazing sauce), tamarind chili spicy grill sauce, key lime and passion fruit mojos, caribe steak spice, and flavored oil and vinegars.

Susser has also become a cookbook author: Allen Susser's New World Cuisine and Cookery (1995) and The Great Citrus Book (published 1997). He is now working on The Great Mango Book, due to be out in summer 2001, for which he conducted extensive research. "I love mangoes," Susser said. "It was something I fell in love with when I came down here. They're so delicious, all the different varieties and flavors, and I enjoy bringing them into the cuisine in different ways. If I've got a mango, does it have to be ripe or can I use it green? I can use green mango because a lot of southeast Asians use it green. Or it can it be powdered, ground green mango, the way the Indians use it. They've been growing mangoes for 4,000 years in India."

In addition to his business and family (wife, Judi, and daughters, Deanna Rose and Liza), Susser finds time for philanthropic work. He is the South Florida chairman of Share Our Strength, which sponsors an annual April event to raise funds for hunger relief. He also donates his time, talents and staff to FIU's annual Florida Extravaganza, which benefits the Hospitality Management program. Over the years, he has taught and lectured at numerous institutions, including FIU (which presented him with an Outstanding Alumni Achievement Award), Johnson & Wales University (which awarded him an honorary doctorate) and Nova University. He has received numerous honors and awards from leading culinary organizations and publications.

Never content to rest on his laurels, Susser continues to increase the range of foods and flavors on his gastronomic palette. In more recent years, his cooking has evolved into a style he calls "New Era" cuisine. He is now incorporating new and different ingredients from the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, India and other lands.

"It's intriguing to bring these flavors together in a fusion. It opens a new era. I think our palates are ready for these new ingredients and the new excitement that's out there."