40 Fun Facts About Wolfgang Puck

Wolfgang Puck was fired from his first kitchen job, aged 14, after it ran out of which vegetable?

Potatoes were the teenage apprentice's main job, so the Sunday shortage landed on him. He sneaked back the next day and peeled in the vegetable cellar for days before the chef found him.

Which late-night host's habit of freezing Spago pizzas pushed Wolfgang Puck into the frozen pizza business?

Johnny Carson took home eight or ten pizzas on Friday nights and reheated them from his freezer. Puck reasoned that if Carson could eat them frozen, other people could too.

Which pop artist wanted to paint Wolfgang Puck's portrait, only for the chef to ask for a menu cover instead?

Andy Warhol did go on to make a menu cover, one of several by famous artists for Ma Maison, the Los Angeles restaurant where Puck was chef. David Hockney drew one too.

Wolfgang Puck and Reese Witherspoon guest-starred in the same 2002 episode of which animated sitcom?

The Simpsons had Puck voice himself in The Bart Wants What It Wants, while Witherspoon played Greta, daughter of the action star Rainier Wolfcastle.

Before the name Spago, Wolfgang Puck planned to call his pizza restaurant after which Italian volcano?

Mount Vesuvius, as Mt. Vesuvio, was to be a pizza parlour co-owned with his boss Patrick Terrail. The plan died in a fight over a single percent of the ownership, and Puck quit.

Wolfgang Puck took an early American job in which city, expecting its famous car race to mean glamour?

Indianapolis sounded like an American Monte Carlo to a chef who had cooked in Monaco. At the restaurant La Tour he was amazed at how many steaks he was asked to cook well-done.

Which Dynasty star's late order led Wolfgang Puck to invent smoked salmon pizza when Spago ran out of bread?

Joan Collins wanted the house-smoked salmon, so Puck laid it on a pizza crust with dill cream and caviar. She said it should carry her name, but it became known as the Jewish pizza.

Wolfgang Puck marked 30 years of catering which official Academy Awards after-party in 2024?

Governors Ball guests always get his pot pie, the crowd favourite. Puck keeps old dishes beside the new ones because, he says, people miss them when they go.

A photograph of the Empire State Building made young Wolfgang Puck dream of which career before cooking?

Architect was the plan because he wanted to build a skyscraper in his own little village. The schooling meant moving to Vienna, which his family could not afford.

Wolfgang Puck opened a Spago in 1992 inside a casino resort's shopping mall in which city?

Las Vegas visitors once found a Madame Tussauds wax figure of Puck greeting customers there, a stunt that briefly took in a fellow restaurateur who had just left him in Los Angeles.

CUT, which won Wolfgang Puck a Michelin star within a year of opening in 2006, is which kind of restaurant?

Steakhouse dining got a sleek, contemporary look at CUT, which Esquire magazine also named its Restaurant of the Year.

Spago, the name of Wolfgang Puck's flagship restaurant, is an Italian word for which everyday item?

String, or twine, is the literal meaning. The plural, spaghi, is the start of the word spaghetti, a hint that pasta was on the menu.

Which streaming service released the 2021 Wolfgang Puck documentary by the maker of Jiro Dreams of Sushi?

Disney+ released the film, titled simply Wolfgang, within two weeks of its Tribeca Film Festival premiere. Director David Gelb was better known for creating Chef's Table on Netflix.

Wolfgang Puck became a household face through regular cooking spots on which network breakfast show?

Good Morning America spots ran beside his Food Network episodes and his kitchenware sales on the Home Shopping Network, which he said grossed $20 million a year in the early 2000s.

Which legendary film director ate lunch at Ma Maison every day while Wolfgang Puck ran the kitchen?

Orson Welles had consommé made especially for him at Ma Maison. He never became a Spago regular, though: he swore off climbing the new restaurant's steep stairs.

Which now-standard restaurant feature scandalized traditionalists when Wolfgang Puck opened Spago in 1982?

Open kitchen cooking put the sights, sounds and smells in front of the diners. Barbara Lazaroff talked a sceptical Puck into ripping out a load-bearing wall to build it.

Ed LaDou, who ran the oven at Wolfgang Puck's Spago, later wrote the first menu for which restaurant chain?

California Pizza Kitchen was founded in 1985 by two lawyers who wanted to bring Spago-style pizza to the masses. LaDou's barbecue chicken pizza is still on its menu.

Wolfgang Puck's revolving restaurant Five Sixty sat atop Reunion Tower in which Texas city until 2020?

Dallas diners ate in a room named for its own elevation on the tower's rotating top level. It closed permanently after 11 years when the pandemic shut restaurants in 2020.

Wolfgang Puck's CUT at Marina Bay Sands won a Michelin star in 2016 in which Asian country?

Singapore's star came ten years after the first CUT opened in California. The same resort also took a Spago, set in its rooftop complex.

Wolfgang Puck's American Wine & Food Festival has raised more than $15 million for which American charity?

Meals on Wheels is the cause behind the Puck-Lazaroff Charitable Foundation, which he co-founded in 1982, the same year Spago opened.

Ma Maison, the restaurant where Wolfgang Puck made his name, famously kept which detail from the public?

Its phone number went unlisted to hold back the crowds expected after a People magazine story. People printed the number anyway, and a hotel concierge was said to be selling it for $5.

Wolfgang Puck was born Wolfgang Topfschnig; from which relative did he take the surname Puck?

His stepfather, Josef Puck, called cooking women's work and wanted him to become a mechanic. Puck has said he refused to go home a failure and prove the man right.

Wolfgang Puck opened the original Spago in 1982 overlooking which famous Los Angeles nightlife stretch?

Sunset Strip landmark Tower Records was the view from the crowded window seats. The 1920s house closed in 2001, when renovating it looked too costly.

Which disco producer behind Donna Summer's hits came up with the name of Wolfgang Puck's Spago?

Giorgio Moroder had been saving the word for a musical he wanted to write. He offered to bankroll the restaurant too, but the two could not agree on how to split the ownership.

Before moving to America, Wolfgang Puck cooked at which Paris restaurant famed for its celebrity clientele?

Maxim's showed him what famous faces do for a dining room. He said a star or politician walking in was a big part of getting people excited, and there it happened every day.

Wolfgang Puck trained at L'Oustau de Baumanière in which sunny region of southern France?

Provence gave him a lasting lesson in local produce. The restaurant kept a huge vegetable garden, and he said he never forgot the flavour of its tiniest beans.

Barbara Lazaroff, co-founder of Spago and later Wolfgang Puck's wife, worked on the restaurants in which role?

Interior designer Lazaroff gave the first Spago its wire-basket patio chairs and bleached wood counters. She went on to design Chinois on Main and the larger Spago that replaced the original.

Wolfgang Puck opened his Asian-fusion restaurant Chinois on Main in 1983 in which California beach city?

Santa Monica's Main Street site had been a punk rock club before it was remodelled into a dining room of fuchsia, black and celadon green.

Which Hollywood honor did Wolfgang Puck receive in April 2017 after decades of cooking on screen?

Walk of Fame star categories have no slot for chefs, so his was awarded for his work in the television industry. It lies at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard.

Which baker, who later founded La Brea Bakery, did Wolfgang Puck hire as Spago's opening pastry chef?

Nancy Silverton baked bread as well as desserts at Spago. She later opened the restaurant Campanile with Mark Peel, who had been Spago's first chef de cuisine.

Which top James Beard Foundation award did Wolfgang Puck win in both 1991 and 1998?

Outstanding Chef went to Puck twice, and in between, in 1994, the original Spago was named the foundation's Restaurant of the Year.

Wolfgang Puck's self-titled Food Network cooking show won which broadcasting award in 2002?

Daytime Emmy honours went to the show, simply called Wolfgang Puck, in the service-show category for the 2001–2002 season.

Wolfgang Puck fought one battle as an original star of which television cooking contest, then stepped away?

Iron Chef America pitted him against Masaharu Morimoto in its Battle of the Masters specials. His other businesses kept him out of the regular series, and Morimoto took his place.

Gelila Assefa, the former model Wolfgang Puck married in 2007, comes from which East African country?

Ethiopia-born Assefa is his third wife. The couple have two sons, Oliver and Alexander; his older sons, Cameron and Byron, are from his second marriage.

Postrio, the restaurant Wolfgang Puck ran from 1989 to 2009, took his cooking to which California city?

San Francisco counted Postrio among its most prominent restaurants. The menu was contemporary American, drawing on a myriad of cultures.

Eureka, opened by Wolfgang Puck in Los Angeles in 1990, combined a restaurant with which kind of business?

Brewery and restaurant in one, Eureka tried to do for hot dogs and beer what Spago had done for pizza. It closed after three years.

Wolfgang Puck opened his first CUT in 2006 inside which hotel, the main setting of Pretty Woman?

Beverly Wilshire rooms are barely in the film: most indoor scenes were shot at the old Ambassador Hotel nearby. Elvis Presley and John Lennon both lived at the real hotel for a time.

Which food giant bought Wolfgang Puck's organic soup business in 2008 and licensed his name for it?

Campbell's bought the business from Country Gourmet Foods and separately licensed the chef's name for soup, stock and broth in North America, a quick way into organic products.

Wolfgang Puck, though trained in French kitchens, has opposed the use of which controversial delicacy?

Foie gras, the fattened liver of a duck or goose, was also opposed by the chef Albert Roux, who argued it should come with a warning about what is done to the animals.

Wolfgang Puck first planned Spago as a pizzeria modelled on the upstairs café of which California restaurant?

Chez Panisse's upstairs café in Berkeley had been baking pizza and calzone in its own oven since 1980, and Puck was telling friends not to miss it.