This Classic Chinese Soup Was One Of Tina Turner's Favorites

Everyone has a favorite soup. Some opt for simple comforts like a bowl of chicken & rice, and others beefy staples like the Mexican caldo de res. Beloved Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tina Turner preferred a classic Chinese soup packed with umami flavor. 

Traveling chef John Quigley cooked for Turner and her crew during her 1990 "Foreign Affair" tour and shared some of her favorite dishes with The Herald in a 2023 interview. While Quigley said Turner typically ate whatever he had on the menu, occasionally, she'd make a special request. An avid lover of Chinese cuisine, one of her favorite things to order was a Chinese staple known as hot and sour soup.

While the recipe for hot and sour soup can vary, it's often full of wholesome ingredients like tofu, wood ear mushrooms, cloud ear mushrooms, chicken or pork broth, bamboo shoots, and the perfect egg ribbons. These ingredients come together to form a range of opposing textures, giving the dish an especially satisfying mouthfeel. True to its name, the soup is also packed with contrasting flavors thanks to flavorful seasonings like sour vinegar, spicy white pepper, and soy sauce. With all these ingredients at play, it makes sense that Turner loved this dish. It's far from the only umami staple she went back to in her lifetime.

With its deep, contrasting flavors, hot and sour soup packs a punch of umami unlike anything else. It seems Tina Turner was a fan of those especially savory flavors, because she liked a little bit of it with her breakfast as well. 

As Oprah Winfrey shared in a 2025 article posted to her website, Turner was the person who introduced her to one of her all-time favorite ingredients: truffles. While Winfrey had never heard of savory truffles at the time (she'd only known of the French chocolate treat with the same name), Turner changed that by adding truffles to Winfrey's breakfast. That first taste changed the way Oprah Winfrey ate eggs forever, and spurred a lifelong obsession with the ingredient.

For those who don't know, truffles are underground mushrooms. Because they're so hard to find (for reference, they often have to be sniffed out by trained animals), they often come with a high price tag. They're also very difficult to cultivate, which only raises the cost more. Still, if you're okay with shelling out on truffles, Turner's truffle-and-eggs breakfast combination could be the first way you try them. You could even fuse two of Turner's favorite flavors together and top a bowl of hot and soup soup with truffle oil. Why not? The rare mushroom's earthy flavors would complement the shiitake mushrooms and tofu perfectly. Bon appetit!