At this time of year, it’s hard to catch chef Wolfgang Puck out of the kitchen.
After all, in the last two weeks alone the Austrian immigrant who’s become Hollywood’s hottest culinary celebrity has had quite a hectic schedule. While operating his L.A.-area fine dining spots Spago, Chinois and Granita (as well as other chic restaurants and Wolfgang Puck Cafes across the country), he’s been busy launching his latest entry, Vert, at the Hollywood & Highland complex, planning DreamWorks’ pre-Oscar studio party at Spago AND overseeing the debut of his new line of frozen pizzas.
Oh, yes, and there’s the little matter of supervising the menu for the Academy Awards’ Governors Ball.
But having the heat on high doesn’t faze the man who helped invent California cuisine by putting barbecued chicken on pizza. I recently caught up with Puck at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where he received the elite Visionary Award from the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. The superstar chef–who not only has his own TV cooking show on the Food Network, he has also appeared as himself in episodes of Frasier, The Simpsons and Ellen and the film The Muse–was raring to go for the upcoming Oscar night.
“We’re gonna have a good time,” Puck told me. “This year’s the first time we’ve had a permanent kitchen, a permanent home, so it’s really going to be easier.” Indeed, Puck and his catering staff will be able to cook everything to order and deliver it straight to the table hot from the ovens in his new 8,000 square-foot kitchen adjacent to the complex’s Grand Ballroom next door to the Kodak Theater. “We have a great kitchen and all the refrigeration. Before we had to schlep everything from Spago to downtown and do part of the preparation there. [This year] we have no excuses if it’s less than perfect.”
Carl Schuster, president and CEO of Wolfgang Puck Catering Events and, like the chef, an eight-year veteran of the famed Ball dinners, confirmed that despite this being the first Academy Awards at the Hollywood & Highland complex, nothing is expected to boil over in the kitchen. In fact, quite the opposite.
“At the Shrine and the Dorothy Chandler we had to go down and build field kitchens and haul everything down and set up offices down there,” said Schuster. “For us [this year] is like a home game. It’s a lot easier for us. We’ve done probably eight or ten parties the size of the Governor’s Ball in the Ballroom since we opened in November, so we’ve been able to work out some of the logistics and the kinks.”
Puck shared with me some of this year’s Governors Ball menu secrets, which include many of the traditional culinary treats he’s created over 20 years at Spago and his other fine dining restaurants, along with some fresh new recipes.
The guests will start munching from hors d’oeuvres trays that will include spicy tuna tartare in sesame miso cones; vegetable samosas with tamarind; Spago-style pizzas; Maryland crabcakes with basil aioli; shrimp tempura with pickled ginger vinagrette; minature burgers with Roquefort cheese; spinach and feta spanikopita; vegetable spring rolls with Chinese mustard; and herb blini with caviar and crème fraiche.
Then it’s on to a trio of salads: goat cheese, roasted beets, blood orange and asparagus; marinated lobster with ginger vinaigrette and smoked salmon with beluga
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caviar on brioche. The wine list includes whites like a 2000 Geyser Peak Chardonnay Reserve and a 2001 Geyser Peak Sauvignon Blanc, California, and reds like a 1998 Geyser Peak Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, Sonoma County and a 1999 Geyser Peak Merlot, Sonoma County.
But all that’s just the warm-up for the entrée selections of sesame crusted salmon with celery root puree and roasted beef tenderloin with stir-fried vegetables and wasabi sauce (the latter dish is a new twist, Schuster said, with a bit of an Asian influence a la Puck’s Chinois).
And despite those form-fitting evening gowns and restricting cummerbunds, stars should definitely save room for dessert. This year Puck is foregoing traditional dessert platters in favor of individual desserts, and as always they’ll be crafted with Hollywood showmanship in mind.
Most intriguing is a milk chocolate-and-apricot dome topped with a gold-dusted chocolate Oscar on a film canister. But the ultimate edible will surely be the white chocolate elephants specially designed to resemble the mammoth stone pachyderms that overlook Hollywood & Highland’s spectacular Babylon Court. “We always have something new coming up a little bit different, but the most important thing is that the food is served really fast and hot,” said Puck. “That’s really our main goal.”
Despite the wealth of Puck-crafted delicacies, the elite diners are also able to make special requests if they have certain dietary requirements or just have a jones for a certain dish–and the stars are not shy about asking for what they want. “We did have one year when a child actor was up for an Oscar and wanted a cheeseburger, so we sent someone down to McDonald’s and got him a cheeseburger,” said Schuster.
“We’re constantly trying to create something out of nothing,” Schuster continued. “We’re usually scrambling more for special requests. Last year Danny DeVito wanted double lobster.” This despite the fact that veal was the main course and lobster wasn’t even on the menu. “He didn’t want the veal, he wanted two lobsters. So I find myself running around handling those kinds of fires.
“It’s been a really good marriage between us and the Academy,” he continued. “People who come into the Ball are people who dine and eat in all of our restaurants, so Wolfgang has a real good feel for what these people like to eat, and how to treat them. We really try to treat them much more like a restaurant than a like a catering experience.”
Being a part of Hollywood & Highland, the Academy Awards and especially the re-glamorization of once vice-plagued, downtrodden Hollywood is something that’s extremely important to the chef. When he launched his new frozen pizza line, he threw a huge party at the shopping complex, which featured three “chefs” rappelling down a billboard tower and an impressive pyrotechnics and fireworks display surrounding the looming elephants of Babylon Court, “They’re starting to call it Puckville,” joked Schuster.
Puck knows a little something about reinventing oneself. After cooking at prestigious European eateries like Maxim’s in Paris, he came to the U.S. in 1973 and captured the palettes of Tinseltown’s in-crowd as the sensational chef of L.A.’s famed Ma Maison before branching out on his own with his beloved West Hollywood eatery Spago.
Setting trends with casual chic dining, an open kitchen and gourmet pizzas, Puck shocked everyone in 1997 when he unveiled a more upscale version of Spago in the posh environs of Beverly Hills. Even Puck’s most faithful followers were skeptical about his chances for success in the slightly stuffier locale.
“For us to have the innovation to move on after 18 years in West Hollywood, I think it’s something where a lot of people said ‘Why do you want to move? You’re so successful,’ And I said ‘This is going to be even better.’ And you know what? We were right.”
You know what? No doubt this star chef will be right about Hollywood & Highland, too.
