Wolfgang Puck
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40 free Wolfgang Puck trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Wolfgang Puck left home in Austria as a teenager with a suitcase and a point to prove, and ended up as the chef most Americans can name. Along the way he changed what a smart restaurant looks like, put unexpected toppings on pizza and turned one Los Angeles dining room into a worldwide business. This quiz collects the fun facts behind that story: the disaster that nearly ended his career before it began, how Spago got its name, the famous regulars and their odd requests, and the shows, awards and supermarket products that followed. It suits food lovers, fans of celebrity chefs and anyone hosting a trivia night with a culinary round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories worth retelling.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Wolfgang Puck was fired from his first kitchen job, aged 14, after it ran out of which vegetable?
Potatoes
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.
Q 02Which late-night host's habit of freezing Spago pizzas pushed Wolfgang Puck into the frozen pizza business?
Johnny Carson
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.
Q 03Which pop artist wanted to paint Wolfgang Puck's portrait, only for the chef to ask for a menu cover instead?
Andy Warhol
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.
Q 04Wolfgang Puck and Reese Witherspoon guest-starred in the same 2002 episode of which animated sitcom?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons had Puck voice himself in The Bart Wants What It Wants, while Witherspoon played Greta, daughter of the action star Rainier Wolfcastle.
Q 05Before the name Spago, Wolfgang Puck planned to call his pizza restaurant after which Italian volcano?
Mount Vesuvius
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.
Q 06Wolfgang Puck took an early American job in which city, expecting its famous car race to mean glamour?
Indianapolis
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.
Q 07Which Dynasty star's late order led Wolfgang Puck to invent smoked salmon pizza when Spago ran out of bread?
Joan Collins
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.
Q 08Wolfgang Puck marked 30 years of catering which official Academy Awards after-party in 2024?
Governors Ball
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.
Q 09A photograph of the Empire State Building made young Wolfgang Puck dream of which career before cooking?
Architect
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.
Q 10Wolfgang Puck opened a Spago in 1992 inside a casino resort's shopping mall in which city?
Las Vegas
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.
Q 11CUT, which won Wolfgang Puck a Michelin star within a year of opening in 2006, is which kind of restaurant?
Steakhouse
Steakhouse dining got a sleek, contemporary look at CUT, which Esquire magazine also named its Restaurant of the Year.
Q 12Spago, the name of Wolfgang Puck's flagship restaurant, is an Italian word for which everyday item?
String
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.
Q 13Which streaming service released the 2021 Wolfgang Puck documentary by the maker of Jiro Dreams of Sushi?
Disney+
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.
Q 21Ma Maison, the restaurant where Wolfgang Puck made his name, famously kept which detail from the public?
Its phone number
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.
Q 22Wolfgang Puck was born Wolfgang Topfschnig; from which relative did he take the surname Puck?
His stepfather
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.
Q 23Wolfgang Puck opened the original Spago in 1982 overlooking which famous Los Angeles nightlife stretch?
Sunset Strip
Q 14Wolfgang Puck became a household face through regular cooking spots on which network breakfast show?
Good Morning America
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.
Q 15Which legendary film director ate lunch at Ma Maison every day while Wolfgang Puck ran the kitchen?
Orson Welles
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.
Q 16Which now-standard restaurant feature scandalized traditionalists when Wolfgang Puck opened Spago in 1982?
Open kitchen
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.
Q 17Ed LaDou, who ran the oven at Wolfgang Puck's Spago, later wrote the first menu for which restaurant chain?
California Pizza Kitchen
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.
Q 18Wolfgang Puck's revolving restaurant Five Sixty sat atop Reunion Tower in which Texas city until 2020?
Dallas
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.
Q 19Wolfgang Puck's CUT at Marina Bay Sands won a Michelin star in 2016 in which Asian country?
Singapore
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.
Q 20Wolfgang Puck's American Wine & Food Festival has raised more than $15 million for which American charity?
Meals on Wheels
Meals on Wheels is the cause behind the Puck-Lazaroff Charitable Foundation, which he co-founded in 1982, the same year Spago opened.
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.
Q 24Which disco producer behind Donna Summer's hits came up with the name of Wolfgang Puck's Spago?
Giorgio Moroder
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.
Q 25Before moving to America, Wolfgang Puck cooked at which Paris restaurant famed for its celebrity clientele?
Maxim's
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.
Q 26Wolfgang Puck trained at L'Oustau de Baumanière in which sunny region of southern France?
Provence
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.
Q 27Barbara Lazaroff, co-founder of Spago and later Wolfgang Puck's wife, worked on the restaurants in which role?
Interior designer
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.
Q 28Wolfgang Puck opened his Asian-fusion restaurant Chinois on Main in 1983 in which California beach city?
Santa Monica
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.
Q 29Which Hollywood honor did Wolfgang Puck receive in April 2017 after decades of cooking on screen?
Walk of Fame star
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.
Q 30Which baker, who later founded La Brea Bakery, did Wolfgang Puck hire as Spago's opening pastry chef?
Nancy Silverton
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.