Wolfgang Puck has the culinary map covered. With more than twenty-five restaurants spanning sixteen cities, the celebrity chef and mogul dishes up classic takes and creative riffs on everything from fine dining to casual cuisine. In addition to being a storied restaurateur, Puck also commands a catering service, has countless cookbooks and manufactures his own line of cookware. He spoke to Gourmet Live about his least favorite food, his five-year-old’s taste for truffles and how one of his most popular dishes actually began as a joke.
Gourmet Live: What led to you initial interest in becoming a chef?
Wolfgang Puck: My mother was a professional chef. So every summer, when I was eleven, twelve and thirteen years old, I spent at least one month with her at the hotel in Austria where she worked. I started working there by helping the hotel’s pastry chef, so when I was fourteen I quit school, and I couldn’t find a job as a pastry chef so I started as an apprentice to a cook. It was really because of my mother that I became a chef.
Gourmet Live: So this is something that’s been ingrained in you for quite some time?
Wolfgang Puck: Oh yes, absolutely. Some people are married for fifty years, but I’ve cooked for fifty years.
Gourmet Live: If you hadn’t chosen the career path of a chef, what other profession would you have pursued?
Wolfgang Puck: I would love to be an artist, a painter.
Gourmet Live: Do you have a favorite food?
Wolfgang Puck: I love all kinds of food, but I think the most important thing to me is the ingredients. For example, it was my wife’s birthday a month ago, and she’s Ethiopian. And sometimes she brings home Ethiopian food from a restaurant, and generally it’s not that good because the ingredients they use aren’t that good. So for her birthday I bought this great meat and we catered a dinner, and it was the best Ethiopian food I’ve ever had. It’s just like at my restaurants. We don’t buy second-class white truffles. We buy the best ones, or we buy nothing.
Gourmet Live: Are there any ingredients you always have on hand in your kitchen at home?
Wolfgang Puck: The most important ingredient in my kitchen is coffee. I use it every day to make espressos or cappuccinos, so that’s the number one ingredient. We go to the farmer’s market every Sunday and buy vegetables and fruits. I have a five-year-old and a four-year-old, so when we go to the farmer’s market we come home and peel carrots together, or peel asparagus. So they play around, and then I steam them with some really good olive oil and sea salt, like Fleur de Sel. The kids love it. I love it. Gelila [my wife] loves it.
Gourmet Live: Do you eat very healthy then when you’re home?
Wolfgang Puck: We try to. But I eat Wienerschnitzel, too, which is a fried food, but if it’s done right and you don’t eat it every day, then that’s OK.
Gourmet Live: The Wienerschnitzel on your menu at Spago in Beaver Creek is actually one of my all-time favorite entrées...
Wolfgang Puck: That’s so funny because obviously I grew up with it [in Austria], so as a child it was one of my favorite things. And when we opened the new Spago [in Beaver Creek] I wanted to change things a bit, so we put Wienerschnitzel on the menu, and it was basically as a joke. I said, “Nobody is ever going to order this!” And it has become the most popular dish [at Spago] in Beverly Hills and in Beaver Creek.
Gourmet Live: Is there anyone you wish you could dine with, living or dead?
Wolfgang Puck: I would’ve loved to have dined with Winston Churchill because he loved champagne, and I love champagne. So we could’ve had not just discussions over politics, but champagne, too.
Gourmet Live: Are there any foods you won’t eat?
Wolfgang Puck: I don’t eat peanut butter. I’ve never liked it. I do like hazelnut butter because in Austria we have Nutella, and as kids we used to love it but it was expensive and my parents didn’t have a lot of money. We don’t have peanut butter in our house now ever.