The Early Years: From Hospitality to the Kitchen
Suzanne Cupps didn’t come to cooking the way many successful chefs do. She didn’t grow up preparing dishes at her mother’s or grandmother’s side, didn’t feel an early pull toward food, and didn’t even care much about it when she first started working in restaurants. Instead, it was the hospitality—the desire to welcome and serve guests—that drew her in. Her mentors, Anita Lo and Michael Anthony, gradually pulled her into the magic of making food.
Cupps grew up in Maryland and later South Carolina. Her mother was from Pennsylvania, and her father escaped the Philippines during World War II as a toddler. His mother—Cupps’s grandmother—managed to flee the country with her three young children after her husband was killed, first making it to Manila, then boarding a U.S. Navy ship to America.
After high school, Cupps wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. She majored in math in college and knew she didn’t want to work behind a desk—but beyond that, she felt lost.
“I wasn’t into food, I didn’t really travel much, but I knew that if I didn’t do something new, I was afraid that I would never try something,” she says. After 9/11, she felt the pull to move to New York. She spent a year working in sales, then landed a job in human resources at the Waldorf Astoria New York—her first real exposure to hospitality. A year later, the hotel needed help in the steakhouse, and Cupps stepped in as assistant manager.
“I loved the fast pace, the environment,” says Cupps. “I never stepped foot in the kitchen, so it wasn’t really about cooking, but I thought, oh, this might be a natural transition—maybe I can work in hospitality and restaurants.”
Around the same time, she began cooking at home and discovered the Institute of Culinary Education through a friend. She studied for six months at ICE and landed an externship at Gramercy Tavern. After graduating, she joined Annisa, where she worked under Anita Lo for six years. It was there that she discovered her love of cooking.
“She taught me how to cook, and the excitement of what it means to be in the kitchen. I loved it. It was such a different environment—stressful and busy, but on my feet and working,” says Cupps. “I think because of my math brain, I liked the precision of cooking. I didn’t have the palate yet, but I just loved cutting something perfectly every day in a square, or cooking a piece of fish perfectly.”
Eventually, Cupps was ready to reclaim her nights and weekends, and accepted a lunch service position at Gramercy Tavern—her old stomping grounds. Like all new hires, she started in the Tavern, working under Michael Anthony. Six months later, he moved her to the main dining room.
“It was the first time that I really started to think about vegetables. I grew up eating vegetables, but it wasn’t on my radar as something you could create a menu around,” says Cupps. “Mike was so passionate about sourcing and farmers and the stories behind it that he really got me interested in that side of cooking.”
