Interview by Fabián Waintal
Story by Susan Kelly
Photography by AMPAS, Wolfgang Puck Catering
Wolfgang Puck, renowned for pioneering fusion cuisine, is one of the most recognized celebrity chefs in the world. For five decades, celebrities have flocked to his fine dining establishments. His culinary empire also includes catering and casual dining options, and regular folks may know his face from cookbook jackets, the label on his branded coffee or when buying his kitchenware.
Highly visible every Oscar night, he is credited with making the question “what are they eating?” as important as “what are they wearing?” March’s 97th Academy Awards marked the 31st time Puck and his culinary team fed a lavish spread to the Hollywood luminaries attending the annual Oscars Governors Ball, the exclusive official after-party following the Academy Awards. Alongside his son Byron, who spent time at a restaurant near Barcelona before joining the family business, Puck served up a menu that included a bit of Spanish flair. “There are a few dishes that he learned there but we modified a little bit,” Puck says in an exclusive interview with Living Luxe. “So we also have some croquettes with mushrooms and a little Serrano ham inside. We have their bacalao dish, but I make it with a spicy tomato almond sauce on mashed potatoes.”
Along with refined delicacies like potato pavé with steak tartare and a wild mushroom and pea shumai, the 2025 menu included some signature dishes. Among them: truffle chicken pot pie, an iconic dish now synonymous with Oscar dinner parties and, according to the chef, a favourite of Albert II, Prince of Monaco. Puck’s team also dished up small plates of macaroni and cheese and “bougie” tater tots topped with crème fraiche, caviar and herbs—reflective of the exquisitely ingenious flair with which this chef can take a humble dish or simple ingredient and elevate it to the sublime.
That flair may have roots in his early years, which the luminary opens up about in David Gelb’s 2021 documentary Wolfgang. Born in 1949 in southern Austria, close to Italy and Slovenia, Puck had an austere childhood, with no indoor plumbing and simple fare on the family dinner table. A difficult relationship with his stepfather motivated him to leave home as soon as possible. A bright spot in his early memories was baking cakes with his mother, Maria, who spent her summers as a professional chef in a nearby hotel. He credits her with inspiring his future career, particularly during his formative years around the age of 11 when he would spend most of his time in the kitchen helping her. “That was the first time I was in a professional kitchen, where everybody had big hats,” he tells us in our interview.
He began formal training as a chef at the age of 14, and as a young man, he worked in some of Europe’s most illustrious restaurants, including Maxim’s in Paris and the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco. After a stint in New York City, at 24, he moved to Indianapolis, where a friend had worked in a fine French restaurant called La Tour. A Formula One car racing fan, Puck was lured by the famed Indianapolis 500. Expecting it to be like Lyon or Monte Carlo, he found the Midwestern metropolis a bit of a shock—but having already spent all of his savings, he stayed and worked at La Tour from 1973 to 1975. “The restaurant was pretty good,” he says. “I told them over the phone, ‘I’m coming to Indianapolis, but don’t ask me to cook hot dogs and hamburgers.’”
After moving to Los Angeles a few years later, he rose to the upper echelons of Hollywood’s culinary scene, which was nothing short of meteoric. He came to the City of Angels to serve as chef of Ma Maison in West Hollywood. Celebrities quickly found his culinary brilliance irresistible. Later, when inducting him into the Hall of Fame, the California Museum cited his pivotal role in developing California cuisine during the late 1970s. “He also launched modern fusion cuisine by combining classic French techniques with California and Asian influences, using fresh ingredients showcasing California’s agricultural bounty,” the bio for his induction in 2019 reads.
In 1982, Puck opened his first flagship restaurant, Spago. On the legendary Sunset Strip, the light-filled space with colourful artwork was innovative in many ways. Most notably, it was the first posh eatery to feature an open kitchen, where the celebrity elite hobnobbed with the chef. Puck’s winning personality, often described as a combination of quiet charm and all-out showmanship, brought a new level of stardom to the culinary scene.
To this day, Hollywood’s A-list enjoys a warm welcome in whatever kitchen he is in. Like at one Oscar party, when Martin Scorsese accosted him at the stove.
“He wanted a pasta, just a simple pasta with tomato base, garlic and everything, and a little spice in it,” Puck says in our exclusive interview. “So we made him the pasta that night, just for him. We can do special things all the time.”
It was in Spago’s early days that Puck created its legendary signature dish: house-smoked salmon pizza napped with caviar. His Sonoma lamb with braised greens was also a standout. He and the restaurant would go on to garner a slew of accolades over the next 18 years, including multiple Outstanding Chef of the Year awards from the James Beard Foundation.
In the early years of Spago, Puck also held his first Oscar viewing party. Though many television stars, such as Linda Evans and George Hamilton, attended, Hollywood’s biggest movie A-Listers, like Gene Kelly, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant, all went to the party hosted by famous agent Swifty Lazar at another restaurant. So the following year Puck approached Lazar, who was a regular at Spago. “I told Swifty, ‘Why you don’t do the Oscar party at Spago instead of the Bistro Garden? You’re gonna get at least good food,’” Puck recalls. They did the party, and all the big stars came, from Elizabeth Taylor and Fred Astaire to Johnny Carson.
Through the years, Puck has seen many more milestones: a slew of other restaurants across the U.S. and around the world, from Maui to Singapore to Budapest to Istanbul, a more chichi Beverly Hills location for Spago, and Michelin and Hollywood Walk of Fame stars.
His celebrity fans remain legion, and though a new roster of A-listers has risen, he continues to cook for Hollywood’s brightest. Such as George Clooney (“He is super nice all the time”). Lady Gaga is another favourite celebrity of his, and he recalls one time when she was in the backroom still getting ready. “She was so hungry, she couldn’t eat because they just had polished her nails,” he tells us.
But he’s also modest enough to admit that on rare occasions things might not work out the way he wants. Like the time he served Some Like It Hot star Jack Lemmon, who usually ordered a salad with canned tuna (accompanied by a martini, of course). Puck served it with fresh seared tuna sourced from a local fish market. “He looked at it and said, ‘Is that cooked?’” the chef recalls. “Later, in the kitchen, I saw his plate back with a few solid leaves, but underneath he was hiding the raw tuna that I had prepared specially for him. He didn’t like it.”
Nowadays, Puck lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Ethiopian designer and philanthropist Gelila Assefa. He has four sons, now adults, two from a previous marriage. When the boys were young, he used to cook family dinners frequently, though these days, the younger two are more interested in going out with friends, he says. His wife sometimes does the honours, too, and amid all the accolades and Michelin stars and A-listers, his family keeps him grounded. He recalls a recent Sunday when, upon his return from a trip to Europe, Assefa served the family a special lasagna with lavish layers of Bolognese sauce and cheese that had taken close to four hours to prepare. “And then we asked the kids, ‘So? How is it? How is the pasta?’” Puck says. “And the kids said to me, ‘Mom is almost as good as you.’”