If you’re channel surfing for the next top chef, it’s easy to get sidetracked by all those quirky
wannabes with tattoos.
“I
think it has come to a point now that a chef doesn’t have to be the
best — I think you need tattoos on your arms,” the tat-less, classically
trained celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck said during a recent interview.
“Everyone wants to be on TV, and everyone wants their own restaurant,
before they even know how to cook.”
Since opening Spago in trendy
West Hollywood in the early 1980s, Puck has built a formidable global
food empire, including more than 20 fine dining restaurants, express
airport cafes and catering operations, gourmet frozen pizzas,
estate-grown coffees and gluten-free soups, as well as a line of
cookware and cutlery. Plus his own iPhone app.
On Saturday night
the chef will be in Kansas City to host “Spice! With Wolfgang Puck,” a
culinary benefit to raise money for Johnson County Community College’s
chef apprenticeship scholarships, the JCCC Hospitality & Culinary
Academy opening on campus in fall 2013 and the Marc Valiani Foundation.
Valiani,
who worked in Kansas City as corporate chef for PB&J Restaurants,
died last year of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Before coming
to the area, he had worked as Puck’s sous chef at Eureka Brewery and
Restaurant in Los Angeles and a year later became chef at Spago.
The sold-out benefit is the brainchild of Valiani’s wife, Kaymie, who
lives in Kansas City, and Bill Crooks, formerly an owner of PB&J,
and his wife, Sarah.
“They brought this event to the college,”
said Kate Allen, executive director for institutional advancement for
JCCC. “We would not have had the connections to reach out to Wolfgang.
We’ve never had anyone like this come in before, and the great thing is
our students get to interact with people at the highest level in the
industry.”
JCCC’s hospitality management program, which began in
1975 with one faculty member and five students, has become one of the
leading culinary programs in the nation. The $13 million academy, now
under construction, will house seven kitchens and serve 700-plus
students.
Kaymie Valiani said her husband would want to be
remembered for his love of teaching, not the disease that took his life,
so the lineup for future Spice! events includes an impressive list of
chefs who were Valiani’s mentors, friends and proteges.
To rub
elbows with Puck, 200 Kansas Citians paid $250 for an individual ticket
or $5,000 for a table of eight to attend the event. The menu is the same
one Puck served at the Oscars’ post-awards dinner earlier this year and
includes some of his signature dishes: assorted gourmet pizzas,
hand-formed tortellini with fresh corn and shaved black truffles,
Shanghai lobster with spicy ginger curry and lamb chops.
Puck’s
longevity in the fickle, what-new-ingredient-have-you-fed-me-lately
restaurant business is legendary. But at age 63, he qualified for
celebrity chef status long before many of the JCCC culinary students
were even born.
“His name is still out there. They go to the
airport, and they see his name,” said Felix Sturmer, an associate
professor for JCCC’s hospitality management program and coach of the
culinary team.
Growing up, Ian Denney, a 24-year-old senior
culinary apprentice, recalls watching Puck on TV. He volunteered to prep
food in the days leading up to the event, and he’s eager for the
opportunity to see Puck in action. “Nerves are a little high because
he’s a big celebrity and an inspiration,” Denney said.
Puck is
Austrian-born and French-trained, yet he is most at home with the casual
inventiveness of California cuisine and the hubbub of the Hollywood
scene. Spago was one of the first restaurants to create an open kitchen
in the middle of the dining room. Puck’s outgoing personality quickly
won him his own celebrity following.
Puck recalls the excitement
of sitting next to Paul Newman in a coffee shop and talking race cars
shortly after Puck arrived in the City of Angels in the mid ’70s to work
at the legendary French restaurant Ma Maison. Three decades later he is
no longer the least bit star-struck, perhaps because he is friends with
almost everyone who is anyone. In the wake of Phyllis Diller’s death
earlier this week, Puck fondly recalled the time he was invited to share
a glass of wine with the comedian in her home.
These days
celebrity chefs are not just an American cultural phenomenon. Puck is
popular in the Philippines even though he jokes he has never been to
Manila, and his forays into social media have added another stage from
which to tout his brand on a global scale.
This summer Puck
decided it was time to remodel and reinvent his flagship Spago. The $4
million overhaul by Cuban-born designer Waldo Fernandez is sure to
ruffle the feathers of regulars, but everything from the small plates
menu to the décor will be carefully watched by those in the food and
beverage industry when the restaurant reopens this fall.
“We have
to reinvent fine dining,” Puck said. “A waiter in a tuxedo looking down
at you is not what people want anymore. I want you to have a great time.
I want you to feel comfortable in a place where the only thing that’s
serious is on your plate.”
Puck’s advice to aspiring young chefs:
“They should first concentrate on being great chefs, and then they can
go do some television. If not, the restaurant suffers. You have to
create your own voice, and that takes time.”
Unlike some of his
compatriots, such as the clogs-wearing Mario Batali or the
epithet-flinging Gordon Ramsay, Puck has decided to limit the amount of
time he devotes to TV. He’s willing to be away for six days to be a
judge on “Top Chef” but not six weeks or six months to do his own
series.
“I love restaurants, and that’s my primary business,” he said.
Source : http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/23/3776537/celebrity-chef-wolfgang-puck-stands.html
