There’s a reason chefs work in the evenings. It’s so they don’t have to go to cocktail parties where civilians corner them by the baba ghanouj and ask the same question over and over again: “And where do you go when you go out for dinner?” This is no idle curiosity. Such blue-chip, horse’s-mouth information is worth gold on the golf course or by the water cooler or wherever people indulge in restaurant one-upmanship. As secret locations go, where chefs dine on their nights off is right up there with El Dorado and the lost graveyard of the elephants: the legendary after-work hang of the culinary community, the unknown hole in the wall that offers the best food in town.

To be honest, I used to ask them, too, back in the days when I was a naive cub reporter trying to learn my way around the city’s foodscape. It used to puzzle me when they all gave the same answer: a greasy, old-fashioned Chinese restaurant on the Spadina strip. Was the food there outrageously good? Well, no. But it was cheap, caloric and relatively wholesome. More importantly, the joint stayed open long after the bars and taverns were shut, and served a particularly refreshing “cold tea” brewed by Molson. It still does, and I have been told by more than one chef that divulging the restaurant’s name would be injurious to my health.

Luckily, they’re far less secretive about the places where they go to actually eat. It’s nine o’clock, and I’m sitting alone at the eight-stool sushi bar at the rear of Toshi Sushi on King West. The restaurant’s fairly quiet tonight and there’s a sense of calm in the room, a leisurely serenity that encourages contemplation. I’m discreetly reviewing an omakase dinner created by owner-chef Shinji Mori (good sushi, not a great selection of raw fish, but impeccably fresh and well cut) when a shadow falls across my chopsticks. Susur Lee is sliding onto the stool beside me, and we both do a double take. While he orders a bowl of miso soup, some agedashi, a little sushi, I can’t help wondering who’s minding the stoves at Susur, half a block west.

“I call this my great escape,” he confides. “I often come in for something to eat, something familiar, a little warm sake—a great stress buster. The people here are friends of mine, and the guys at my restaurant know where I am. If there’s an emergency I can be back there in a moment.”

In weeks when things in his own kitchens get too intense, Lee might take his cooks out somewhere for a bowl of pho after an early morning visit to the Food Terminal. When he wants to spend time with one or another of his three teenaged sons, he knows how to attract their attention. “Jet loves Chinese food; Kai loves all kinds of food, but usually asks to go to Terroni—the one on Queen West—for pizza; Levi likes Oyster Boy.” And when he and his wife, designer Brenda Bent, go out it’s often to Queen West West’s Noce for well-made Italian food.