Wolfgang's Puck

Trojanland. 2006. Wandering through Commons and arriving in front of the Wolfgang Puck Café, the thought came to me, impetuously, “You gotta be kidding me. I want a slice of pizza, not a brainwashing.” Albeit an eatery ostensibly uncharacteristic of central dining on a college campus, where thin, scraggly-bearded young men pop up skateboards and rest them on the edge of the counter, the place was packed. But the café belonged. It arrived 12 years before I turned up to judge it. For the rest of the day, I entertained myself with mental images of frat boys the morning after Homecoming, surrounded by Puck’s empty pizza boxes, and of course, good old-fashioned vomit. Puck’s brand name thrived in yet another market: Colleges of the $40K.

I had never dined at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, eaten at a Wolfgang Puck Café, or bought a Wolfgang Puck product. Yet, I stayed loyal to an implicit defiance that prevented me from falling in line. As weeks passed, my reaction to the Café became increasingly bitter. It disturbed me to see a crowd form there at lunchtime, especially as they waited to purchase a meager 3” individual pizza for $5.50-$5.95. I wanted to shout, “Sell outs! It’s not even real pizza.” I refrained from risking literal banishment and formed an imaginary group to bond with, instead. “Not once did I spot a Puck café in New York [on my last visit]. New Yorkers know better, that’s why!”

After much tacky, intrapersonal commentary, I realized that the meaning I attach to Wolfgang Puck is quite different from the franchised image that exists today. Having been eight years old at the dawn of the 1980s, I had retained a personalized awareness of the impact Puck made on food culture and the Los Angeles entertainment scene, before he marketed his image worldwide. Of course, I didn’t identify it as a “personalized awareness” back then. I would simply say to my mother, “Ma, the man with the big forehead is on,” and we would watch Puck whip up the killer schmooze on Good Morning America. He seduced us with his dry Austrian wit, celebrity relatives (they christened him, you know) and, reputedly, “California cuisine” with the power to tempt Tantalus all over again. No matter who you were, you wanted Puck to put something in your mouth.

In the world I grew up in, Wolfgang Puck represented a complex amalgam of metaphors which formed one connotative meaning on top of another. He was the Academy Awards; a movie premiere party; the chef to the stars. He was the privileged distinction between the rich and poor. But only to an exclusive group in society, was he food. Yet, through his arête as a chef and extraordinary marketing, he has engaged a following of customers who have devoured his image, having never tasted a morsel of food personally prepared by him. A large portion of consumers are still drawn to his products based on the glamorous relationship he had fostered with the Hollywood elite that frequented his first restaurant in the 1980s.

“The original Spago,” as most Hollywood insiders would say, is the context from which Puck emerged. From the street, it resembled a Hollywood Hills home more than it did a restaurant, as it sat nestled in a hill above the Sunset Strip with a panoramic view of all that lied below it. I would ride my bike past it on hot summer days, hoping to spot someone famous, while fantasizing that I was a local resident who had come drifting down from the canyon. Peddling away from my east Hollywood neighborhood toward the Strip always felt liberating, as I rode west, springing up and over dingy, cracked concrete, to reach sidewalks that sparkled with specks of mica dust. For both me and Spago, reaching this part of town was an invigorating rite of passage.


The Strip represented the glam and glamour of Hollywood. Horns honked. Heavy metal girls wore leather miniskirts in the dead of summer. Billboards seemed to scream: “You’re nothing without your Calvins!” Bargain basement hookers who sometimes drifted too far west, walked the Strip like a cat walk. Occasionally, I’d spot the self-promoting starlet, Angelyne, cruising in her pink Corvette.
These were some of the incidentals of Hollywood. Spago, however, was at the center of all things powerful in Hollywood and above all things that pretended to be. It was a kind of fulcrum that balanced the film industry on one side and exquisite culinary delights on the other. Presidents, movie stars, media moguls…. They were all there; and through their collective taste buds, they belonged to a special club. To be the master of ceremonies among all that sparkled and danced in Hollywood afforded Puck millions of dollars in free publicity. It was the kind of advertising that brand names would kill for today. But in the 1980s, celebrities spoke of Spago as if it were an extension of the film studio or record label they belonged to.

Hollywood was a boom town. According to Harvey Levenstein, the entertainment industry belonged to the upper echelon of the American population that was greatly benefiting from Reaganomics and looking for new ways to spend freed up tax dollars. Spago was not an ultra-expensive restaurant, but what distinguished it from other exclusive eateries was its casualness. If Jackie O. was in Los Angeles and wanted to dine-out in her Levis, Spago was the place to go. She could enjoy a gourmet meal, but feel as though she were at an informal house party. That was the idea. It’s what famous and wealthy people wanted in a period of haughty extravagance -- a casual hangout that they could call their own. To imagine that this social exigence is one of the elements that could have set the stage for Wolfgang Puck is very different from what the media promoted.

I always imagined Spago as a place of fairytale mirth: laughter and white pearly smiles, glasses clinking, extravagant diamond jewels, legendary wine -- all accompanied by the intoxicating, exotic scents of gourmet cuisine settled under the noses of the rich and famous. Quite naturally, this was a place into which I surmised I might never gain entry.

There existed a generation of people like me, bombarded with Puck’s glamorous Hollywood image, but who had been unable to cash in. In a sense, the media told them: “You should know about a better kind of food in our society, but you cannot experience it because you belong to an inferior class.” At the end of the 1980s, a portion of these marginalized consumers had become ripe and craved some of the excesses of the decade, as well as a tangible connection to the beautiful people. By the time Puck proposed to package his image and sell it to the middle-class, they were ready. Supermarkets and cafés shuffled Puck into a new era. It had never been done. Wolfgang Puck, the celebrity chef, was the new hero of consumer foods. He not only owned a few gourmet restaurants, but operated cafés marketed to the middle class, merchandised foods to supermarkets, had his own line of culinary products, and hosted his own television cooking show.

Amidst all of the hype over Puck’s newfound markets, there still existed a large segment of potential Wolfgang Puck customers who rejected Puck’s attempt to market to them. This group has not forgotten about the greed and excess of the 1980s, and either consciously or unconsciously, associates Puck with an era that marginalized either them or their parents. The class distinctions were economic and social, but Puck’s contribution succeeded in outclassing them by food too. Rather than being drawn to Puck’s brand, this group feels mocked by it. Puck had created a product which they can afford by mass marketing his image, not mass producing the food he once served to the elite. To them, his brand communicates the sentiment, “Let them eat cake.” Their response to this gesture is: “Screw you.” They have not passively accepted Puck repackaged in a frozen pizza. Why would they? They would rather walk a few blocks past one of his cafés to a juicy hamburger joint. These are people who shun his products, as they had once felt shunned. For better or worse, this is the group to which I belong.

With all due respect to Wolfgang Puck, he has built an impressive empire. Yes, he is a product of his time and that has benefited him very well, but he is also an extremely hardworking businessman. It would not be fair to judge all that he has accomplished, or even the image he has used to promote himself, without having tasted some of the food he is famous for. There was only one way to gain a broad, social perspective on the achievements of the famous chef -- a visit to Spago. Needless to say, last weekend was an expensive one for my fiancé, who generously footed the bill for this section of my research. Dinner for two, without liquor and including gratuity, totaled $240! The price has gone up.

According to food critic Ruth Reichl, the original Spago closed its doors in March 2001. Spago Beverly Hills is a different restaurant Puck and his then wife, Barbara Lazaroff, opened in 1997 and is more traditionally formal. I would like to exclaim that my dining experience at Spago Beverly Hills this year completely transformed my beliefs that Puck’s image is what sells his food, but it did not. In all honesty, I have no need to dine there again, eat another café pizza, or try another supermarket item. I’m done.

Wolfgang Puck does not cook at Spago, our waiter explained. He primarily involves himself in managing his food empire, while occasionally making appearances at Spago Beverly Hills, and some of his other restaurants when needed. He is still a charismatic schmoozer, and guests appear more excited about meeting him, than they do about their meals, a former employee of Puck’s shared with me. He directs the kitchen only rarely on special occasions.

Without having ever tasted food prepared by the “chef to the stars,” I cannot judge Puck’s ability to overwhelm my taste buds. His personal touch, is still, most commonly, the privilege of an elite few. So, I may never know. But if you ever get the chance to sample the real thing, please look me up.