Wolfgang Puck is a world famous Austrian-American celebrity restaurateur, chef, and businessman, born on 8th July, 1949. The famous chef owns various catering services, restaurants, and licensed products, which are operated by Wolfgang Puck Companies, with three divisions. Also, the chef is famous as a cookbook author, where he reveals his experiences and hard work as a chef, while revealing various marvelous Wolfgang Puck recipes.
An empire has been built by Wolfgang, which encompasses three distinct entities, viz
Wolfgang Puck has really changed the cooking style of Americans where he prepares food by combining together California and Asian aesthetics, French formal techniques and quality ingredients to come up with entirely different and signature Wolfgang Puck recipes.
Puck gained interest in cooking from his mother who worked as a chef in Austrian town. Due to immense encouragement and inspiration from his mother, Wolfgang Puck took his formal training in the cookery field at the age of fourteen years. He worked in various top class restaurants in France such as Hotel de Paris in Monaco, L'Oustau de Baumanière in Provence, and Maxim's in Paris.
Thereafter, Puck left Europe and went to US when he was just 24 and took a job in La Tour restaurant in Indianapolis. He worked for around two years and went to Los Angeles in 1975. Soon, he became popular as a chef in Hollywood and became a part owner in West Hollywood of “Ma Maison”. Due to appealing Wolfgang Puck recipes, culinary brilliance, and dynamic personality “Ma Maison” gained huge popularity among the rich class, with Puck being the start attraction. During late 1970s, Puck gained immense national attention due to his through and natural understanding of California cuisine.
In the year 1982, Wolfgang Puck opened his own flagship restaurant by the name of “Spago”, located on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Signature Wolfgang Puck recipes like Sonoma baby lamb with braised greens and rosemary, and haute cuisine pizzas topped with smoked salmon and caviar brought Puck and his restaurant on the top of the world.
In the year 1983, Wolfgang Puck started Chinois on Main in Santa Monica. Here he was inspired to go for fusion cooking style where he combined Asian flavors and ingredients of Chinatown, Thaitown and Koreatown with California and French cuisine. The menu at this outlet consisted of imaginative and fresh Wolfgang Puck recipes having an appeal of Asian fusion, thus building the foundation of fusion cooking style in America.
In the year 1989, Wolfgang Puck came up with another restaurant “Postrio”, in the Prescott Hotel off San Francisco's Union Square. The contemporary American cuisine, with much emphasis on use of local ingredients, has made this restaurant quite popular in extremely competitive culinary market of Northern California.
In the year 1997, Wolfgang relocated his famous restaurant “Spago” on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills, and gave it an elegant touch. Here the menu was updated in a wonderful way and depicted most exciting Wolfgang Puck recipes portraying a blend of updated and reformed Spago classics. Austrian specialties like Kaiserschmarren and Wienerschnitzel are also offered. Also, new items prepared by various other world renowned chefs were included in the menu. This Beverly Hills based restaurant earned two Michelin stars recently.
In the year 2006, Wolfgang Puck opened a contemporary and sleek steakhouse by the name of “CUT” at highly praised Beverly Wilshire, a Four Seasons Hotel. In just one year time span, CUT earned one Michelin star.
The chef never stopped after that and went on and on to open various restaurants. He came up with his own three divisions. The chef along with his Fine Dining Group division worked hard to open several restaurants across the United States from Atlantic City to Maui
Wolfgang Puck and his restaurant “Spago” bagged various awards.
Cookbooks
Wolfgang Puck has certain cookbooks under his name, which include the following:
TV Shows
Wolfgang Puck can be seen on various TV shows as celebrity chef. A few popular ones include the following: