Abandoned by his father before he was even born, sent as an apprentice to cruel masters at a young age, and immigrated to New York without money, is this success of an Austrian educated in French cuisine, not a success in America that should be taken as an example?
So, what brought this success to Spago? Let me tell you right away: Difference.
Wolfgang Puck and Alice Waters, owner of the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, are two important chefs who pioneered the "modern California cuisine" movement almost 40 years ago.
Chef Wolfgang Puck, who immigrated from Austria to the USA at the age of 24, became famous with the restaurant he opened in Los Angeles in 1982, called Spago, and became the owner of a giant restaurant empire.
Wolfgang Johannes Puck (born July 8, 1949) is an Austrian-American chef and restaurateur. His favorite food is macarons. One of Wolfgang Puck's signature dishes at his original restaurant, Spago, is house-smoked salmon pizza.
Wolfgang Puck was born in Klagenfurt, Austria, and had a very unhappy childhood. His father, a butcher, abandoned his mother while she was still pregnant with Wolfgang. When he was fourteen, they sent him to work as an apprentice in a hotel restaurant in a neighboring town. The Austrian chef of this restaurant far from his home was such a cruel man that young Puck could not stand the persecution and quit his job. But there he discovered that he loved the kitchen and the cooking profession.
This time he went to France to learn how to cook. He first started to work as an apprentice in Provence with a chef named Raymond Thuilier. Then he completed his cooking training at Maxim's in Paris. Now a well-trained French fine dining chef, Puck set off to New York in 1973, hoping for better job opportunities; but there was no stitching. He eventually found himself in 1975 as the chef of the famous French bistro restaurant Ma Maison in Los Angeles (LA). The regulars of the restaurant are like Hollywood Parades: Michael Caine, Jack Lemmon, David Janssen, Jacqueline Bisset, Joan Collins, Morgan Fairchild, etc.
BAD BOSS RESTAURANT OWNER MADE
Ma Maison's real boss, Patrick Terrail, was stingy and used second-class porcelain and cutlery in his restaurant. He also disliked delegating work to his managers. Although he is the chef who made Ma Maison restaurant famous again, these attitudes of his boss started to make young Wolfgang think that it is time to open his own restaurant. At the same time, he was trying to find out what was going on in the San Francisco, Berkeley, and Napa regions of California at that time, seeing that a very interesting food and beverage movement started. What is happening there is a 'return to essence' movement, which we can summarize as a return to the natural, the organic and the simple, and the local, within the Hippie movement. In other words, the seeds of this movement, which would later become the name of California cuisine, were originally planted by the Hippies.
While Puck was following these developments, on the other hand, he insisted that the classical style in Ma Maison should be changed and the menus with more Italian and Nice features should be returned. He even offered to serve ravioli and pizza at this French restaurant. But since boss Terrail didn't heed these suggestions, Puck started to lay the foundations for his own restaurant, which would eventually work with this logic. The 'Spago restaurant was opened in 1982. Spago was the first LA restaurant to have an open wood-fired pizza oven inside.
Spago became an event in LA the first day it opened. A French bistro that cooks pizza in an open oven! There is almost no media in the city that does not speak positively of Spago. Of course, Wolfgang Puck's cute, affectionate and soft character had a lot of influence in this wide sympathy. The chef has always been a person who has always been understanding towards his staff, never forgetting the cruelty he suffered from his cook in Austria.
BEING DIFFERENT: THAT IS THE ISSUE!
So, what brought this success to Spago? Let me tell you right away: Difference. For one thing, the French restaurant that sells pizza inside is different in itself. Secondly, pizza has become a dish almost identical to the American people. Because in those years, a food culture called 'American pizza' was formed, which was liked by a wide audience. Only American pizza was traditionally made with pepperoni, sausage, onions, and fresh peppers, while Puck brought radical changes to American pizza for those years. Once upon a time, pizzas were cooked in a wood-fired stone oven, as in Chez Panisse. Even the stone kiln of Spago was built by the German master who made the kiln of Chez Panisse.
But the more important differences were in the use of materials. Puck began to use 'local' California ingredients in his pizzas, which no one would have thought of before. For example, Santa Barbara shrimps, scallops, and prosciutto; goat cheese of the Sonoma region; like local aubergines, artichokes, or even fresh zucchini blossoms. Whenever he was going to put sausage on pizza, he always made them from lamb or duck meat and always produced them in his own restaurant. The most famous pizza is the cream-curry pizza with thin slices of smoked salmon, caviar, red onion, and dill.
Puck had the agility to quickly get whatever kitchen-related things were 'in' in California at the time. For example, Puck was the first 'white' restaurateur to buy fish from Japanese markets in LA. He served this sashimi-quality raw tuna on radica, with sliced avocado, olive oil with basil, and sweet onions brought from the Hawaiian island of Maui. In other words, Puck started the first fusion cuisine application before there was even a mention of fusion cuisine. As a result, Spago restaurant became the "ultimate American restaurant", reflecting all the developments in California's culinary culture. Puck, whose excitement never ends, opened Chinois, a creative Chinese cuisine restaurant in the city of Santa Monica, just one year after Spago, which became a phenomenon the day it opened. This too has been very successful.
EMPIRE OF GASTRONOMY AND OSCAR
Puck, who was constantly researching and was able to quickly turn his instincts into a holistic vision, was a chef who did not hesitate to try creative recipes that he defined and developed without being a prisoner of any tradition, in every restaurant he opened. For example, in a modern Chinese restaurant called Chinois, the famous French dessert was served with creme brulee. This dessert is Spago's favorite dessert. He prepared and served the creme brulee in three small sake cups, one with ginger, the other with mint, and the third with mandarin orange.
The secret to Puck's success lies, above all, in having a very solid foundation of French cuisine. On this basis, the chef has built an extremely different cuisine unique to California and himself, by observing the radical changes in the culinary culture of California, where he works, and incorporating the differentiation required by these changes into his recipes. Realizing that neither the historical dishes of Austria nor the devotion to the classic French cuisine can bring a chef to fame, Puck became the owner of one of the largest restaurant empires in the world today. The Spago restaurant, which he opened in Beverly Hills in 1997, 15 years after LA, has not been included in the list of the 40 best restaurants in the USA to this day.
Wolfgang Puck was also the official head chef of the Oscar ceremony, the American cinema awards. He was preparing the gala dinner.
https://wolfgangpuck.com/