Who Is Susur Lee’s Wife?

Susur’s awards include the prestigious CAA Five Diamond Award, Cannes, France; the American Academy of Hospitality Services’ 5 Diamond Award (selected as one of the “World’s Best Chefs”) and being named one of the “Ten Chefs of the Millennium” by Food & Wine. In 2017 he was given “Canada’s Best 100 Lifetime Achievement Award”.

In April 2017, Fring’s Restaurant in Toronto, co-owned by Lee and rapper Drake, had its liquor license suspended for a week by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. The establishment was cited for numerous Liquor Control and Fire Protection and Prevention violations, including overcrowding, promoting “immoderate consumption”, and failing to post its licence.

In August 2017, prior occurrences of employees at Lee’s Toronto restaurants — Lee, Fring’s, and Bent — having their tips docked to pay for spilled drinks, errors, and unpaid guest checks, an illegal business practice in Ontario, were revealed via screenshots on a pseudonymous Twitter Account name account known for calling out personalities in the Toronto food scene. As a result, representatives for the chef have announced the policy is no longer in effect. Still, a petition was launched demanding the chef and his restaurants reinstate the money that was withheld. After more than 7,000 customers petitioned Lee, he and his sons, Kai Bent-Lee and Levi Bent-Lee, who help to manage the family business, announced that they would refund all retained gratuities to current and past staff.

In 2007, the Ontario Ministry of Labour investigated six claims of unpaid wages from former employees at Lee’s Susur restaurant on King Street West in Toronto that also included complaints of excessive work hours, failure to provide employees with due time off, and various other employment standards and human rights violations.

Susur’s career includes being a chef at numerous Toronto dining establishments, judging culinary events, appearing on many food and wine television shows and owning/managing popular restaurants in Canada, US and Singapore. Lotus, his first restaurant, opened in Toronto in 1987. He currently owns and manages Susur Lee Restaurant Group.

Susur grew up in Hong Kong, the youngest of six children. He served his culinary apprenticeship at Hong Kong’s renowned Peninsula Hotel. He immigrated to Canada in 1978 and met and married his first wife, Marilou Covey, the same year. In 1983 Susur and Marilou had decided to move to Hong Kong, but Marilou died as a passenger aboard Korean Air Lines Flight 007 that was destroyed by a Soviet jet fighter. Susur remarried (Brenda Bent) in 1991, with whom he has three children: Kai, Levi, and Jet.