An Exclusive Interview with Chef Wolfgang Puck

Are your friends and family reluctant to cook for you in fear that you might consider their cooking to be less sophisticated or creative than yours?

"I’m an easy and polite guest wherever I’m invited - as long as they have a good bottle of wine on hand."

What is a typical workday like? How many hours a day do you work? Do you work from one location, or travel around to your various restaurants?

"I’m the luckiest guy in the world because my work is also my hobby. So whether I’m starting early in the morning, or finishing late at night, I love the restaurant business. I certainly have to travel a lot to our different locations from Maui to Atlantic City, and the only thing I don’t like is meetings with accountants, lawyers, or attending board meetings."

Why do you think you’ve had such staying power in the Hollywood dining scene, when other chefs and trendy restaurants come and go so fast?

"We are not a trendy restaurant or bar like so many of the others we see opening over the years. We are all about quality and in the end, quality will win out and stay around for a longer time."

Do you ever watch other celebrity chef shows – or popular cooking shows like “Top Chef”? If so, which are your favorites?

"I rarely watch television and cooking shows – as a matter of fact, I only saw a few of my own shows – but I think Emeril, Mario and Bobby Flay are doing a great job and I think Top Chef is also an interesting show because it gets young people involved and interested in cooking."

You were very impressive in your Iron Chef "Battle Egg" victory. What was that experience like? Was it as hard as it looks?

"Being in a competition - it’s always a little nerve-wracking and difficult, but I never had any doubt that we would win. It was harder than it looks."

You’ve recently expanded your prepared food offerings to include four new appetizers; pork spring rolls, arancini, shrimp cakes and chicken pot stickers. How did you decide on these items? How many recipes did you test before settling on these? Are these regular items from your catering business, or were they specifically designed for the retail market?

"Most of the new offerings in our food line started in the restaurants like shrimp cakes, potstickers, spring rolls, etc. I only had to decide which ones would hold up the best when you freeze them and which ones were easy to serve. We always taste and test a lot of different appetizers in the restaurant or for our frozen food offerings. Most of the items we selected were already popular in our catering kitchens or we did them for parties at the restaurant, so I thought it would be nice that people can have a wonderful product handy at home."

You are outspoken in regard to using as many organic and natural ingredients as possible, but how do you respond to people that say they simply can’t afford the added expense? Is there a solution for making these foods a more realistic option for the average American shopper?

"We always try to use only the best ingredients and most of the time, the organic and all natural ingredients are better in taste and better for you. Unfortunately, not everybody can afford all organic or all natural but I hope that this will be the direction where our food industry goes. And I believe that instead of subsidizing people to grow corn to make fuel, the government should subsidize organic farmers so that schoolchildren will get a healthy delicious meal instead of the unhealthy options they have now."

If you hadn't become a chef, what would you be doing right now?

"It’s a very difficult question since I’ve been cooking since I was 14. But I certainly would love to be an artist more than anything. For me, Robert Rauschenberg's work is the best example of the type of art I would like to make. I make soups for the supermarket, and Andy Warhol painted the cans."

Thank you for the interview Chef, and for sharing your recipes with our readers.

"My pleasure! Thank you."


Try Some of Wolfgang Puck's Signature Dishes at Home
We will be publishing some of Wolfgang Puck's favorite recipes over the next few weeks, and what better recipe to start with than his world-famous pizza dough recipe!