Nothing could slow East Marion resident and famed chef Rosa Ross. Right up to the end, she was writing and giving out orders from her chair.
“My mother was a powerful force, had boundless energy, knew everything and could do anything. She led us by her example of how to be and live and I owe my best attributes to her,“ said Sarah Ross, her eldest daughter.
After growing up as one of five children from a prominent family in Macau, where her meals were cooked by servants, Ms. Ross fell in love and moved to London. According to family lore, she and Ron Ross only married in 1960 because they wanted to go to Italy together and couldn’t go as an unmarried couple. It fit perfectly with her character as a woman who made her own way, regardless of what people thought.
“She lived life on her terms — she could not be convinced. She could not be cajoled,” said Samantha Ross, her younger daughter. “She could not be pressured. For better or worse, she lived life on her terms. And you know, it’s really cool to have had a mother who, in that period, when women had so many challenges, was carving out their own path. To really be able to say, ‘wow, my mom was this trailblazer. She didn’t even want to get married.’”
In London, Ross began to learn to cook. She purchased a “Good Housekeeping” magazine and mastered the basics, but it was a chance meeting with the famed chef Marcella Hazan at a dinner party while living in Italy that truly began her culinary journey. She fell in love with cooking and began to reconstruct recipes backwards from what she could discern through taste.
As previously published in the Northforker, in 1980, Ms. Ross began teaching clients along Park Avenue how to cook basic Chinese meals through her mobile cooking school, Wok on Wheels. The catering service exploded in business, leading Ross to write multiple books about Chinese cooking, including “Beyond Bok Choy” and “New Wok Cooking.”
In 1983, Ross came into contact with Peter Kump, founder of the New York Cooking School (renamed the Institute of Culinary Education in 2001), the first cooking school in New York City. He asked Ross if she could teach classes on Asian cooking, which also gave her the opportunity to learn international cooking from some of the most famous chefs in the industry, such as James Beard and Jaques Pepin.
Ms. Ross saw mentoring those around her as part of her life’s purpose. Her wit and enthusiasm for life and those she loved knew no bounds, and the language of that love was food. She believed in giving of herself to others, whether it was her experience, skills, time or advice.
“I think her message was to live a happy life and to be a mentor. To be a mentor was, maybe not something she said aloud, but she was a mentor in every stage of her life…I think it’s through that energy of mentorship that she reached so many lives,” said Samantha Ross.
Samantha Ross also remembered paying her mother’s ‘dumpling tax.’ “When we were kids and we wanted to go out on the weekends, shopping or running around the city, and she inevitably had some catering job she was prepping for. She would be like, ‘Okay, you can go out, but not until you each make me 50 dumplings.’ And we’d have to pay this toll to get out of the house in the form of child labor, that would be our ticket out of the house with a little pocket money.”
For many of her daughter’s closest friends, Ms. Ross was a formative figure of their childhood, acting as a role model and friend. “Mrs. Ross taught me the art of a dry wit, how to make 40 dumplings at lightning speed,” said Katy Wang, a friend of Ms. Ross’ daughters who worked for her catering group. “A ‘dumpling tax,’ as it were, before Sam and I could go play outside — and that the fine details always matter. Mrs. Ross was also pivotal in helping me understand and more deeply appreciate my own identity as a Chinese American, for which I will be forever grateful.”
Her children’s friends often came to work at her catering business, bringing them along to learn from her in a new venue. At times, her lessons could be blunt, but it was always well intentioned. “She was always generous with her knowledge and expertise,” said Ann Faison, who worked for her catering group.
Colleagues also found being in Ms. Ross’s orbit a pivotal learning experience. Paul Grimes, one of her collaborators, described Ms. Ross as a balancing influence on their catering business, where her acumen reined in his creative impulses.
“We had a great working relationship together,” said Mr. Grimes. “She had a great palate and a good sense of the history of food. Her background was so varied, and she was fearless in the kitchen. She wasn’t afraid to do anything, and that made it fun working together.“
On the North Fork, Ms. Ross and her husband became close friends with the family that owned the wharf in Greenport. To Ms. Ross, the structure that sat on Preston’s dock seemed like an ideal spot for a restaurant, and in 2004 she made the leap from teacher to restaurateur. She named her establishment Scrimshaw.
For Samantha Payne-Markel, her relationship with Ms. Ross began when she was a 15-year-old kid looking for a bussing job at Scrimshaw. Ms. Ross wasn’t conducting the interview but kept interjecting from her desk across the room. Eventually, she got up and joined the meeting. It was the start of a deep friendship.
“She became an integral part of my life,” Ms. Payne-Markel said. “At times she was compassionate and loving like a grandmother. Other times she was blunt and would lecture me like a worried mother. She was one of the funniest people I have ever met. I would consider her above all else to be a dear, dear friend.”
Even former customers grew close to Ms. Ross. Rick and Ellie Coffey, owners of a local B&B, started off as regulars at Scrimshaw, making weekly trips to the restaurant to imbibe, eat dumplings and hope to speak with Ms. Ross. One night, she did make an appearance in the front of the house. The Coffeys struck up a conversation and the couple and Ms. Ross became friends. After the restaurant closed in 2016, the Coffeys tried in vain to replace their favorite dumplings but could not find one that satisfied. Finally, Mr. Coffey reached out to the source. “I summoned up all my courage and called Chef Rosa and asked, would you be interested in giving a dumpling making class at our B&B?” he recalled. “Without hesitation she responded, ‘I would love to.’”
Many of the teens and young adults who worked for Ms. Ross stayed in touch. She had a way of making them comfortable and bringing them along, an anchor in times of chaos.
“She was a mentor to countless kids out here,” Ms. Payne-Markel said. “Scrimshaw really was so much more than a restaurant; it became a safe place for a lot of kids in the community [who were] growing up at a time when they didn’t have a lot of role models, or a lot of grown-ups they felt they could trust and learn from. It’s evident in how many of them are still devoted to her.”
Ms. Ross is survived by her daughters Sarah and Samantha, her grandchildren Clara and Renaldo, sons-in-law, siblings, nieces and nephews. A service is planned for the fall of 2024.