Wolfgang Puckis arguably the most famous chef in the world, so it’s a little surprising that it took this long for a documentary to be made about him. But as it turns out, Puck wasn’t just waiting for the right time – he was waiting for the right approach. Indeed,Wolfgang– which is now streaming on Disney+ — is probably not the Wolfgang Puck documentary many are expecting. When I spoke with Puck recently about the film during a press day, he explained that he’s been approached many times over the years about having a documentary made about his life, but all of those pitches involved focusing on the Hollywood aspect of Puck’s career. FilmmakerDavid Gelb, who revolutionized the concept of “food documentaries” with the intimate and cinematic Netflix docuseriesChef’s Table, instead wanted to delve into Puck’s past and explore what made him the man and chef he is today.
For Puck,Wolfgangwas an opportunity to finally get candid about his abusive stepfather, and how the trauma from his childhood reverberated throughout his life. Originally, Gelb and Puck discussed doing an episode ofChef’s Table, but given the breadth of Puck’s career, he says that Gelb countered with crafting a feature-length documentary instead. The result, Wolfgang, is a deep-dive into Puck’s past as he reflects on his childhood in Austria while also discussing how his career began and flourished in California. The film touches on Spago and how Puck became the world’s first celebrity chef, but also follows Puck on a trip back to Austria to meet up with his sister and confront his past. In that way, it’s far more introspective and intimate than one might expect, and it’s fascinating to get this kind of emotionally raw insight into someone as famous as Puck.
During our conversation, the renowned chef explained why he had complete trust in Gelb to tell his story, why it was time to talk about his past, and the experience of going back home with cameras following him. But we also discussed lighter fare, as Puck told a great story from his time at Spago and also revealed how he feels about the intersection of art and cooking and what makes a truly great chef. Puck also talked about the future, and how the onus is on chefs to make plant-based meat substitutes that actually taste good as the world’s population looks to eat more sustainable food for the sake of the environment and health of the planet.
Puck was clearly happy with howWolfgangturned out even if the experience of making it was painful, and it was a joy to talk with him, however briefly, about his life and the future of food. Check out the full interview below.Wolfgangis now streaming on Disney+.
How did this documentary first come about and what was your reaction when the idea was floated to you?
WOLFGANG PUCK: I was a big fan of David Gelb. He didJiro Dreams of Sushi. I remember watching it late at night somewhere with my son. And we both looked at it, and he said, “Oh, Papa, I’m so hungry.” So I said, “Oh my, this is a good film.” And then obviously I watch Chef’s Table and all the professionals watchChef’s Tableall the time. And David is also a customer of our restaurant, so when we talked often about this and that, and he said, “For you, I cannot do justChef’s Table. I have to make a bigger project.” And so that’s how it started. We talked about maybe doing my biography at the beginning. I wasn’t so sure. But then I said, “You know what? It might be good to tell people the story they don’t know. They know me now being successful, having a beautiful family and doing this and that, but nobody knew my beginning.
Well, I imagine given your success and fame, you’ve been approached about documentaries in the past or doing something of, of that ilk. Had you turned it down in the past as something you weren’t interested in and it just took David to get you into it?
PUCK: I think it’s the right person to do the right thing maybe, yeah. I didn’t want to make it Hollywood. A lot of people who approach me, they wanted to make it into a Hollywood story, me serving famous people or whatever. And I didn’t really want to do that because people see me like that already enough. So I sought to really tell the story where it started, how it started, how the adversity affected my life. I think that was really, for me, maybe a good beginning, even though I never talked about it. I mean, I was very funny the way I have Austria in my heart and in my head, because I never went on vacation there really, until like two years ago. And I went for two, three days and that was it. I went to my home maybe for two days, or once in a while, but not for a long time. So I think it’s an interesting story to relive my past.
Well, and that’s a really emotional part of the film. I’m curious what that experience was like for you to go back home and then to have David and the cameras on you at that time. Was that a little bit comfortable?
PUCK: I think in a way it made me re-feel pain. It made me re-feel life and what could be different, why it wasn’t different. So it was an interesting experience, I must say. I talked a few times with some psychiatrist about it. I said, “I want to get it out of my head and everything.” But it never went away, because it’s so ingrained in me. And not to say there were not good parts. I remember the smell of my mother’s cooking at home on Sunday. That was certainly a good souvenir, but I think the abuse of my stepfather, both emotionally and physically really, I think took its toll and got too deep into my head and into my heart.
Was it this trip specifically that inspired you to bring back that Austrian cooking at your restaurant?
PUCK: No, I did the Austrian cooking already before that, because I said, you know what? The cooking, it’s really a great childhood memory for me because the smell of wiener schnitzel or any of these dishes really are also in my head. So I thought, “Okay, I’ll take the good parts and relive it every day.”
Whether it’sChef’s TableorThe Chef ShoworUgly Delicious, we’re really getting kind of an inside look into a bunch of chefs and their lives and their personality and how they feel about food, and then how that feeds into the food that they make. And I’m curious from your perspective, having been a chef in the limelight for all this time, does it feel like with the rise of all these streaming services and documentaries that you’re getting to see a new side of chefs and a new side of cooking?
PUCK: I think its become bigger because of all the things now. I remember in the ’80s, I was on the Good Morning America show or David Letterman. There was no Food TV. There was no Bravo competition. There wasn’t all that. So that’s really fairly new and in many ways for the better. So we get many more young, talented, smart people into our profession, which didn’t exist before. So I think that’s really the positive influence in that.
Now also, they forget to tell people you don’t become a chef overnight. You’re not a chef if you may cook five good dishes. It takes much more than that to be able to be a manager, to be a good cook, to inspire people. I think that’s really a sense you have to learn and you have to live them. And I think at the end of the day, yes, it is important, the whole social media and everything. And we don’t do enough of that. We could do more and we should do more. The world changes so fast now.
It seems like all roads lead back to Wolfgang, because you had that revolutionary open kitchen where people got to see the chef and now people are sitting in their living rooms, watching David Chang go around the world and talk about food and cook his own food. It feels like there’s a direct line to you.
PUCK: You know what? It is really when we opened Spago and we had the open kitchen and that was so new then. And sometimes I think about what could be now so new that’s so different, what will it be? But now it’s more like a slower evolution of different things. You know? Even when I opened in Chinois, it was the first fusion restaurant, because I didn’t know how to cook Chinese food. I’m going to make dim sum with goat cheese because I knew from my upbringing, we made this giant cheese ravioli (laughs). I said, “Okay, I’m going to put that in wrappers and make pot stickers out of it.” So in a way, I’m would mix the Austrian part or this and that together, because I didn’t want to cook traditional Chinese food. I wanted to make it my way. It’s like if you are painter, you don’t want to paint Miro’s painting. Even they look simple with the black dot and some lines or whatever, but he did it already. So we have to figure out a new direction, a new way, the way I used to feel about it.
Well, that was a question I had for you. Do you feel like there is much new territory to explore? Is the current status of cuisine and food a bit stagnant?
PUCK: I really believe there’s always new things coming up. 40 years ago, we were not that that concerned about the environment. Now we are very concerned about it, and we are very concerned how are we going to leave the world in a better place than it is today? And when you look like what Elon Musk did of having a battery-powered car, I don’t know why they didn’t develop that 40 years ago. Maybe it wasn’t necessary. Now, all of a sudden this whole global warning has come to the surface. Obviously, the whole thing with the green gas as out there has come to the surface. All of a sudden we found out that 25 or 30% of the green gas is from the cows. And we in America, we are big steak-eaters. Maybe there’s another way to grow meat — and they did it already, in laboratories where they can use a cell and grow meat. They make already meat-looking meat out of like Beyond, for example, right here in Los Angeles, where they make this product, it’s totally vegan basically, out of peas and beans and everything. Is it going replace a steak? No, but can something be made out of it? Yes.
It does feel like people’s tastes are changing because of that. There is maybe less of a desire for meat and more of a desire for something more sustainable that’s going to taste good. And then the onus is kind of on the food world to create whatever that may be.
PUCK: Totally. It’s for us, for chefs who know about taste, who are talented, who are good technicians, they can make something out of it. What happened is like with Beyond ,they’re hamburger patties. And a hamburger patty, when you treat that meat like that, whatever you call it, it doesn’t have the flavor. It doesn’t have the flavor of the beef. To me, it’s unsatisfying, but you can make really good things with that, by cooking them differently.
I’m also curious, from your perspective, do you believe cooking is a skill to be acquired, or is it an art form to be mastered?
PUCK: Well, I think a French word is good. It’s called an “artisan”. Art- comes first, and -tisan is something you do. So I think it’s basically technique and then being a real professional, but it can become artistic. It’s like being a painter. you may paint really well, but you don’t have the inspiration of doing something new, you just paint whatever somebody else did. And then if you’ll come up with a new idea. Who would have thought like Jasper Johns is painting the American flag or things like that? They come up with some new style or are doing the Cubist period or the blue period. That’s really what you have to do. If you want to be called an artisan, you’ll have to come up with something new, something different, something that wasn’t done exactly that same way before.
One of the really fun parts of the documentary is all this footage from Spago when it first opened. And it made me kind of nostalgic for the days when people weren’t just sitting in a restaurant looking at their phones. And I’m sure you have a million stories. Does anything spring to mind as really memorable?
PUCK: Oh, we had so many different stories (laughs). When we opened in ‘82, I remember in ‘84, we had the Olympics for example. And one night the king of Sweden came with this whole entourage, with the police motorbikes and their police cars and everything, and he comes into the restaurant and we made dinner. I think they ordered off the menu. And then at the end, I signed a cookbook. I said, “I’m going to sign a cookbook to his wife.” You’re not going to give it to the guy. And so, I signed a cookbook to the queen and gave it to her. And he grabbed the cookbook from me and says, “No, I cook at home!” And I said, “Your royal highness. You cook at home. You have nothing better to do.” He said, “No, I’m passionate about food!” (laughs)
I was curious, just as a chef yourself, is there something right now that you’re cooking a lot of really regularly, that you’re really into?
PUCK: We are working on the whole new concept with the meatless meat. I think that’s really part of the future, part of how we going to stop all this greenhouse gases and all that stuff. I think it is really an important thing. Not to take away — people are always going to like a good steak or chicken or whatever, but there are other ways really where we can do a lot of things. And I think hopefully I can create and we are talking with Gelila my wife, and she is the CEO of this new company. And hopefully we’ll come up with a new concept, but I cannot divulge it yet because I have not finished it yet (laughs).
You have accomplished so much and you have so many different restaurants, and it appears as though the quality in all of them is pretty consistent. I’ve eaten at a Wolfgang Puck Express in an airport and it was great. How do you personally make sure that the food is good when your restaurants are all over the globe?
PUCK: The most important thing, I always tell people we buy the best ingredients and then try not to screw them up. And that is really true. If you eat a Caesar salad in the airport, it should taste as good as if you order a Caesar salad in any of our restaurants. If you go to the Bel-Air hotel and you eat the Caesar salad in a restaurant there, it should taste the same, because the vinaigrette, the recipe is the same for the airports. We make the dressing and send it to them. So that way there is no bad or good, it’s always the same because consistency is really important.
So I think really in the restaurants, we buy the best ingredients. We don’t try to buy cheap. We don’t try to get the best deal on something because it’s not as fresh. You can buy salmon and you get a good deal because it’s not that fresh. No, I want to always buy the best quality. It’s really important. That’s why I still love to go to the farmer’s market and to the fish market. Even today, I would have gone to the farmer’s market, but I could not. I said, “I feel bad because I have to do the interviews for the documentary.”
