ANGLE CHEF DE CUISINE MANLEE SIU TO BE FEATURED CHEF AT JAMES BEARD HOUSE AUGUST 8TH
Local residents can watch Le Cordon Bleu graduate in the kitchen via “chef cam” as she prepares a menu of Florida-inspired flavors at famed New York City venue
PALM BEACH, Fla. – Manlee Siu, Chef de Cuisine of Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa’s Angle restaurant, will be the featured chef at the James Beard House in New York City on Monday, August 8th. This is Siu’s first invitation to cook for dinner guests at the prestigious New York City culinary venue that was once the home of legendary American Chef James Beard.
Local fans of Chef Siu will be able to watch her at work during this special evening by accessing an online “chef cam” set up in the kitchen at the James Beard House, available at www.jamesbeard.org/kitchen-cam. The video feed will be live on August 8th beginning at 6:15 p.m.
Siu, a native of Hong Kong and a graduate of both the University of California and Le Cordon Bleu, has helmed Angle since May of 2015. She joined the resort’s culinary team along with award-winning Executive Chef Thomsen, who has called Siu his “best ingredient” in their culinary collaborations over the years.
“I am thrilled to have the incredible opportunity to cook in the kitchen of the James Beard House,” said Siu, who will be joined that evening by Angle Pastry Chef Robert Bellini. “All chefs owe so much to the culinary inspiration of James Beard and the mission of this foundation, and we are honored to be chosen to represent Angle and Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa next month.”
Since joining the team at Eau Palm Beach, Siu has debuted elegant, Florida-inspired dishes such as her butter-poached Florida lobster with “caviar” – pearl pasta poached with squid ink – served in a signature caviar tin. Always a passionate advocate of locally-grown and sourced ingredients, Siu has established a pickling and fermenting process at the resort that preserves the best flavors of each season for use in Angle’s menus throughout the year.
For the Beard House event, Siu has curated a decadent “Palm Beach Panache” dinner of locally-inspired dishes, featuring ingredients such as Key West shrimp, Loxahatchee alligator and eggs from Lake Meadow farms in Ocoee, FL. (To view the complete menu, visit www.jamesbeard.org/events/palm-beach-panache).
“All of us at Eau Palm Beach are extremely proud of Chef Siu for having earned this invitation,” said Thomsen. “It’s truly a testament to not only her culinary skill, but also her dedication to the mission of the Beard Foundation to ‘celebrate and nurture’ America’s diverse culinary history. Chef Siu is the embodiment of that idea.”
Becoming a chef was a major life change for Siu, who earned a bachelor’s degree in managerial economics from UC Davis before joining her family’s restaurant operations. After 10 years she knew her true passion was cooking – taught to her as a child by her mother after the family moved to northern California when Siu was 4 – and decided to formally study cooking at Le Cordon Bleu in San Francisco. Upon graduating, she immediately joined the staff at the awarding-winning Gary Danko restaurant in San Francisco. Not long after, she met rising star Chef Josh Thomsen, and the two collaborated to open the Meritage restaurant at the Claremont Resort & Spa in Berkeley, CA, where Siu was Chef de Cuisine.
Following her time at Meritage, Siu became Chef de Cuisine at Revival Bar & Kitchen in Berkeley. There, she began exploring and teaching the concept of “snout to tail, root to shoot and farm to table,” a restaurant philosophy that seeks to provide guests with the highest-quality, freshest food while eschewing waste and non-seasonal ingredients.
Siu joined Thomsen in re-locating to the east coast to launch a true farm-to-table restaurant, Agricola, which operates its own 120-acre farm in Princeton, New Jersey. Agricola was named one of the top restaurants in just its first four months of opening and one of the Ten Best New Restaurants in the United States in 2014 by Gayot.
When she is not in the kitchen, Siu can be found unwinding with a new cookbook or seeking out a local farm to find new ingredients for Angle. She is a supporter of the James Beard Foundation, the March of Dimes and Meals on Wheels.
About Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa
Situated on a secluded private beach on seven acres of the Atlantic coast with breathtaking ocean views and lush tropical gardens, the AAA Five Diamond and Forbes Five-Star Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa was recognized as Florida’s top resort in the 2015 Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards. Spacious accommodations offer a Capri meets Santorini meets Palm Beach vibe and feature private balconies with hanging chairs to enjoy ocean views. The resort’s many amenities include the Forbes Five-Star, award-winning 42,000 square foot Eau Spa, three tennis courts, two pools, a fitness center and an outstanding child and teen club called AquaNuts/Coast. With over 30,000 square feet of meeting and event space, Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa accommodates groups from 10 to 1,000 and offers a wide variety of indoor and outdoor venues for private events. Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa has four restaurants and is just minutes from the lively Palm Beach nightlife and shopping. Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa is a distinctive member of the Preferred Hotels & Resorts Legend Collection. For more information, please call 800-328-0170 or 561-533-6000, visit www.eaupalmbeach.com, or contact your travel professional.
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About the James Beard Foundation
The James Beard Foundation’s mission is to celebrate, nurture, and honor America’s diverse culinary heritage through programs that educate and inspire. A cookbook author and teacher, James Beard was a champion of American cuisine who helped educate and mentor generations of professional chefs and food enthusiasts. Today the Beard Foundation continues in the same spirit by offering a variety of events and programs designed to educate, inspire, entertain, and foster a deeper understanding of our culinary culture. These programs include educational initiatives, food industry awards, an annual national food conference, Leadership Awards program, culinary scholarships, and publications. In addition to maintaining the historic James Beard House in New York City’s Greenwich Village as a “performance space” for visiting chefs, the Foundation has created a robust online community, and hosts conferences, tastings, lectures, workshops, and food-related art exhibits in New York City and around the country. The James Beard Foundation is a national not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in New York City.