W ROLE MODEL
CHARLIN SAM-YU MADELLIN Age: 31 Occupation: Manager, Hsiu Yu restaurant. Personal: Married with an 11-year-old stepdaughter and a baby on the way. Why she’s a Role Model: Took what she learned from her college business studies and other jobs to help her parents continue and enhance their family business. Her own role models: “My mother grew up very poor and not well-educated, but was determined to make a better life for herself. She moved here, worked hard and from nothing, she built a successful story and business. I look up to her.” She also cites her older sister, Hope Morgan of McKinney, “who is also a strong woman, mother of two wonderful, well-mannered boys. She has been successful in all her careers, starting from the bottom and working her way up.” Best advice ever given: From her mother — “Without hard work, you won’t get far; the amount of work you put in is the amount of happiness you’ll get back.” Goals: “Being the best wife that I can be; taking on this business someday and making it even more successful, keeping our clientele by giving the best customer service and making my parents proud.” Believes… “No matter what you choose and what mistakes you make, you can always change your life to make it better, and all those mistakes are life lessons you learn from.” Dining favorites: Hsiu Yu’s kung pao chicken; sushi restaurants. Favorite relaxation strategy: Watching TV (Grey’s Anatomy is her favorite), playing video games (God of War) and reading. What she’s reading: Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir, by chef Eddie Huang; The Pregnancy Journal, by A. Christine Harris; and What to Expect when You’re Expecting, by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel.
In the Family Tradition Charlin Sam-Yu Madellin follows her parents into restaurant business
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By Paula Allen
Photography by Janet Rogers
f you’ve lived in San Antonio for more than a New York minute, you’ve
and Hsiu Yu, opened the restaurant, which specializes in Hunan- and
probably eaten at the tried-and-true Chinese restaurant on Broadway,
Szechuan-style dishes.
just inside Loop 410. And if you’re one of Hsiu Yu’s regulars of
As she grew, Madellin started helping out — refilling glasses with
decades’ standing, you’ve probably gotten acquainted with the family
water and tea, seating customers, bringing tickets for to-go orders to the
who established it in 1983 — including the owners’ daughter, Charlin Sam-
kitchen and, once she was 17, waiting on tables. Despite the glamour of
Yu Madellin, who has worked there as long as she can remember.
doing grown-up work at a young age, and the warm relationships with
When she says, “I grew up here,” during an interview at the restaurant,
repeat customers, life wasn’t always easy for the restaurateurs’ child. “I
she means it literally — not just in San Antonio but at the unassuming,
felt I never got to have fun because I was always at work,” she says. “For
comfort-Chinese eatery at 8338 Broadway. “I was running around here
safety reasons, my parents didn’t want me home alone, so I couldn’t play
when I was 2 years old,” she says. That was the year her parents, John
with my friends. Then, I felt let down. Now, I don’t regret anything.”
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