A SEAT AT THE TABLE: After more than 60 years in the restaurant industry, Wolfgang Puck continues to build his empire. (Photo by Christina Gandolfo)

Wolfgang Puck (OPM 53, 2019)—aka the father of California cuisine, OG celebrity chef, and culinary empire-builder—began his career as a disgraced cook’s apprentice at a hotel restaurant. At 14, he’d been eager to take the post just outside his Austrian hometown: Not only was he always happiest in the kitchen but the job also was a chance to escape a brutish stepfather at home. Alas, not long after he started, he was abruptly fired by a volatile cook. Despondent to the point of desperation, Puck says, “a light went on in my brain: What if I just go back tomorrow and see what happens?”

It was the first in a long series of “what ifs” that would shape Puck’s career.

The next morning, Puck did indeed return. The furious cook demanded that he leave, but the owner intervened, sending the young man to work at a sister establishment. Puck never looked back. By age 19, he was an apprentice under famed chef Raymond Thuilier, at l’Oustau de Baumanière, in Provence. Everything from Thuilier’s perfectionism to the produce grown in his own gardens inspired Puck: “I thought, I want to have a restaurant like he has.”

Of course, he would have that, plus much more as CEO of Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Wolfgang Puck Catering, and Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc. But first there would be years spent cooking in other people’s restaurants, including Ma Maison, which Puck turned into Los Angeles’s hottest hotspot in the late 1970s. Finally, in 1982, he opened his own place: Spago.

Spago changed everything. The lively open kitchen and Puck’s unpretentious brick-oven pizzas and farm-to-table fare felt fresh to California’s fine diners, who also fell in love with the charming chef. But even as his reputation grew, Puck continued to explore the “what ifs.” In 1983, he experimented with a new concept—Santa Monica’s Chinois on Main, where he popularized Asian fusion—and also went international with Spago Tokyo.

Within a couple years, all of America knew of Puck. A few engaging cooking demos on Good Morning America snowballed into full-fledged TV-chefdom. Then, in 1987, after watching Spago-devotee Johnny Carson take stacks of pizzas home to freeze, Puck decided to branch out and sell his frozen pizzas to the grocery-buying public. Puck—the man and the brand—was suddenly everywhere.

The 1990s brought still more expansion: In 1993, Puck opened his first casual, full-service cafe at Universal Studios (today there are 95 worldwide). In 1995, he catered the Academy Awards Governors Ball (he’s done so every year since), which gave rise in 1998 to his full-fledged catering empire. In 1999, a friend’s success with QVC inspired Puck to sell his own line of cooking tools on the Home Shopping Network; now, 25 years in, he is HSN’s longest-running collaborator, with more than $620 million in revenue.

Of course, tracing his rise in such a truncated fashion frames Puck’s success in a far more straightforward way than he experienced it. “I made mistakes, too,” he says—tough openings, closings, a few busts. And secondly: “I didn’t just explode and say, ‘Okay, now next year, we’re going to open 10 restaurants,’ ” Puck explains. “I was just curious about everything.”

Curiosity is also what led him to the Owner/President Management program at age 68. He was by then a world-famous restaurateur and successful CEO who had written seven cookbooks and won three Michelin stars, an Emmy, and a James Beard Foundation lifetime achievement award. But he’d never attended college. He wanted to. “Learning is an important part of my life,” he says. “If you’re successful today, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful tomorrow. You have to evolve, to change constantly.”

Now, at 75, Puck’s evolution continues, this time in the form of a new Santa Monica restaurant, a collaboration with architect Frank Gehry, age 95. At press time, the two living legends were awaiting permits, but Puck’s enthusiasm is as unflagging as the man himself. “A Frank Gehry building on the beach!” he says. “It’s going to be amazing.”

How to: Get a good meal on the table fast.

Keep it simple.
Limit yourself to five or six ingredients, Puck advises. Simple—even a jar of tomato sauce—can be delicious. “To make it interesting, chop an onion, add a little garlic and a few chili flakes, sauté that in olive oil, and add the tomato sauce. Then cook the pasta and toss it in there. And put a lot of parmesan in it. Parmesan makes everything taste better.”

Plan ahead for busy times.
“Pre-cook on a Saturday, if it’s raining out. Or if you have ripe tomatoes, you can make a Bolognese sauce really easily and then freeze it.”

Go for the tried and true.
“When people say, ‘Oh, I have important people coming for dinner,’ I say, ‘Make something you’ve done 15, 10 times, so that you know how to do it right.’ Don’t try to impress yourself with something new.”

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