(birds chirping)
(indistinct chatter)
-Welcome. -WOLFGANG: How are you?
-Long time no see. -We all got gray hair, all of a sudden.
-And how did that happen? -Yeah. You lost weight.
-I want to look like you. -(laughs)
MAN 1: Oh, have you had this one yet? Oh, it's excellent.
Mmm.
MAN 1: Restaurant business is a tough business.
Yeah, to stay in business is not easy because you have to change.
You have to work more so now than ever.
You know, before, the world was moving slow.
-It's moving too fast now. -Now it's like in overdrive.
WOLFGANG: I don't like to talk about the past too much
because I start thinking how much time is there left.
At my age now, I probably should say, "Wolfgang, slow down and take it easy."
But it's quite the opposite.
Mmm.
As a younger chef, my mentor told me,
"Wolfgang, you're gonna have many opportunities out there.
But the opportunities are just like trains in a train station.
You have to grab and hop on one train
and, hopefully, it takes you in the right direction,
hopefully, it takes you where you want to go."
And that's really how I've lived my life.
Ladies and gentlemen, our next guest is one of the great chefs of the world,
and his restaurants are some of the finest on the planet.
Please welcome our own friend, a fine chef, Wolfgang Puck.
(audience applause)
Wolfgang, without a doubt, was the first celebrity chef.
Hello, everybody. How we doing, all right?
Oh! Look how beautiful.
NANCY: He has so many restaurants
and so many different types of restaurants.
All the products that he has on the shelves,
you know, I can't even keep up with them anymore, to tell you the truth.
Mm.
(lively music)
WOLFGANG: Hello, good afternoon, are we ready?
ALL: Yes, chef.
All right, what are we making?
EVAN: The biggest misconception about Wolf,
is that he is just a celebrity chef and like can't cook.
Okay. Are you finished with the agnolotti or what?
EVAN: But nothing could be farther from the truth.
Good, yeah.
The Mt. Rushmore of California cuisine, Wolf's right there in the middle.
EVAN: He's a founding father of the way we eat in this country.
The biggest restaurant that everybody knows, Spago, Spago, Spago.
When Wolf opened Spago, he changed the way Americans eat.
RUTH: He put pizzas on the menu in a fancy restaurant.
And that was revolutionary.
Put them on the fire. We need for 20 people.
One of the big innovations to come out of Spago was the open kitchen.
LAURIE: It elevated the chef because what is going on in the kitchen,
is as important as who is in those seats.
-I'm gonna go in the dining room, okay? -Yes, chef.
-I'll see you in a few minutes. -All right.
Hello, how are you? How are you?
EVAN: Wolf brought the chef into the limelight as someone to be talked about,
someone to be written about.
He changed the perception in the public for what a chef is.
You know what you have to try for sure is our agnolotti with truffles.
His life, it's about embracing the possibility.
RUTH: Taking every opportunity that you're given and going with it.
Wolfgang doesn't have an end game, maybe that's why he's still at it.
NANCY: He hasn't figured out what that end game is.
(birds chirping)
(doorbell ringing)
(Christina in German)
(in German)
(sizzles)
(in English) My cookbooks here, look at that.
Almost all of them, huh?
-CHRISTINA: Yeah. -Oh, you have all of them.
I have all of yours, yeah.
Wow.
WOLFGANG: As a kid,
the kitchen was the only place...
where I felt safe.
(tranquil music)
WOLFGANG: I grew up really poor.
We didn't have running water in the house. We didn't have a toilet.
But on Sunday for lunch, I would help my mother make wiener schnitzel.
Maybe some mashed potatoes.
It was like my favorite thing to do.
(Christina in German)
(in English) RUTH: Wolf was illegitimate.
His mother was a villager in this little town in Austria.
After she had Wolf, she married a coal miner,
who was really abusive to Wolf and Wolf's sister and Wolf's mother.
WOLFGANG: Life with my stepfather was really rough.
He terrorized us.
He would say you are so lazy. You are good for nothing.
His voice really got into my head.
I remember being like eight, nine years old,
and he would come home drunk,
and say, "You go in the forest and pick your stick."
I felt like something in my inside was shrinking.
And I said, "You know, I want to get out of here."
(audience cheer)
Hello, I'm Wolfgang Puck. I'm here on the world-famous red carpet,
celebrating Hollywood's biggest night, the Academy Awards.
-Congratulations. -Thank you so much.
Great food. Great food.
REPORTER 1: This is a preview of the food that Wolfgang Puck is preparing.
This is our chocolate Oscars which are covered in 24-carat gold.
Some good news, they found Nemo.
(audience laugh)
The bad news, he's in one of Wolfgang Puck's puff pastries.
(indistinct chatter)
RUTH: When I first started writing about food in the '70s,
being a chef was a blue-collar job. It was a terrible job.
People knew who owned the restaurant.
They rarely knew who did the cooking.
And Wolf changes that in a really big way.
MICHAEL: When he opened Spago,
Wolfgang Puck did something that no one had ever done in the past.
Celebrities loved going there.
I was a young agent in the '80s,
every time I would call a client and give them a choice of where to go,
choice one, two, and three was Spago.
(upbeat music)
The restaurant opened at six o'clock and it was packed from six o'clock,
and the last reservation was at 11.
JANNIS: I would look at the reservations and I would assign the tables.
There were about two dozen tables in the front room that ran along Sunset.
The B and B-minus tables were on the west side.
The A tables were on the east side, that was the prime real estate.
I read the Hollywood Reporter to keep up with what was going on.
If something happened and you knew that somebody wasn't as powerful any more,
man, you know, they lost their standing.
(indistinct chatter)
JANNIS: I would put Sean Penn on table two, Steven Segal in table 20,
Arnold Schwarzenegger here, Tony Curtis there,
Tom Cruise there, Paul Newman there.
MARK: One time Michael Caine, Sean Connery and Sidney Poitier came in.
They had a table of six people, right in the middle of the dining room.
No one around them would leave. And that happened all the time.
(indistinct chatter)
RUTH: Because celebrities loved Spago,
he got know all the movie stars and the directors,
and the perception of what a chef was, was starting to change.
Good night. See you soon.
(bird chirps)
That's Mittagskogel.
So, they call it... Mittags is noon.
And it's the noon mountain because in the summertime,
the sun at twelve o'clock, it's right above it.
See that's the little island here where we swam out here,
from the hotel in the back there.
WOLFGANG: When I look back and think about my childhood here,
it's really difficult.
I was starting to love cooking
and I couldn't wait to get out of the house.
So, when I finished school, when I was 14,
my mother found me a job at the Post Hotel as a cook's apprentice.
I was so excited, but my stepfather said, "Oh, you're gonna be back in one month,
and you're never gonna be anything.
If you are a real man, stay out of the kitchen."
I decided at that moment, I want to prove him wrong.
My job was peeling the potatoes, cleaning the kitchen.
I didn't do any cooking but I was just happy to be there.
Everybody just looked at me and said, "What is this little kid doing here?
He should be in school, you know."
I was so nervous that I'm going to screw up and have to go home.
That was my biggest fear.
And then one day in the middle of lunch, we ran out of mashed potatoes.
At the end of lunch, the chef called me over,
and told me that I was good for nothing.
I don't know why they hired you. And I remember his red face.
He had this huge belly and he was screaming at me,
and I was like this, tiny, a 95-pound kid, you know.
He fired me and kicked me out of the restaurant.
(dramatic music)
WOLFGANG: In my head, I said, "I cannot go home."
The last thing I want to have is my stepfather say,
"Yeah, I told you so. You're back now."
By that time, it was almost dark.
I walked to the bridge over the Drau River.
And I stood up there, looking down in the really dark river,
and thinking, at home, I get this negativity.
This feeling that I'm good for nothing.
Now, it happened again.
Maybe I am good for nothing.
Maybe I shouldn't be here.
Maybe that's the solution.
So, I stood there for about an hour.
And then all of a sudden, I decided, I don't want to give up.
I'm gonna go back tomorrow and see what happens.
The next morning at 6:30 a.m., I went back to the hotel.
The chef starts screaming at me and says,
"I told you, you're good for nothing, to go home."
I said, "I'm not going home."
So, I dug my little heel in and as they tried to grab me,
I moved back and I says, "I'm not leaving."
He didn't know what to do.
So, he called the owner of the hotel.
The owner says, "Well, if he's so determined to stay here,
maybe I will send him to the other hotel."
They owned another little hotel called the Park Hotel,
and we'll see what happen.
To me was like, "Oh, my god, a present fell from heaven."
I learned that nothing comes easy.
But giving up is not an option.
(whirring)
-WOLFGANG: Who made the olive rolls today? -CHEF 1: I did, chef.
-Huh? -CHEF 1: I did, chef.
-Very nice. -CHEF 1: Thank you, chef.
-Is that an appetizer or main course? -Appetizer, sir.
WOLFGANG: Early on at Spago, we used to make smoked salmon,
with brioche and dill cream and it was very popular.
One day, the restaurant was crazy busy.
And we run out of brioche.
All of a sudden, Joan Collins comes in.
She was like the biggest star on television,
and she always wanted smoked salmon. And I said, "What I gonna give her?"
We didn't have baguettes, we didn't have any bread.
And you know you don't want to make Joan Collins mad.
(thwacks)
(tense music)
WOLFGANG: So, I stretched out a pizza dough.
Added some finely chopped onions,
and baked it for a few minutes.
And I put some dill cream on it.
I put the smoked salmon, cut really thin on it.
A few dollops of caviar, and I said, "Wow, this is perfect."
I think, the best food comes from somebody that knows the rules,
and then can break 'em.
NANCY: What's interesting about the smoked salmon pizza was that,
it had no tomato sauce and it had no cheese.
As simple as that sounds today,
I don't think anyone had done a pizza like that before.
REPORTER 2: Sometimes, when you ask Wolfgang Puck what's cooking,
you may not understand the answer, but you're bound to like it.
LAURIE: When it came to food, Wolf was always willing,
to go in a different direction and take big risks.
NANCY: With Chinois, he wanted to use his French techniques,
to complement Chinese cooking.
That was the beginning of fusion.
(upbeat music)
(sizzling)
EVAN: Wolf's Chinese chicken salad at Chinois birthed this explosion,
of the Asian chicken salad forever and ever.
Like you can go to like supermarket and find Asian chicken salad in a bag.
Like, he did that.
MAN 2: Making chicken salad, right, Chinese chicken salad.
WOLFGANG: Excellent Chinese chicken salad.
Sometimes, I think, inventions come where you least expect it.
WOLFGANG: All of a sudden, out of necessity,
something good comes out.
I got really lucky when I got the job at the Park Hotel.
I started to stamp the French fries, peeled onions.
They showed me how to make the pancakes in the pans.
Little by little I started to get better.
(in German) RESTAURATEUR: Right. Here you go.
And wiener schnitzel.
-Thank you. -Enjoy your meal.
Thank you.
Just a little.
(in English) WOLFGANG: I was so proud of myself
when I could heat up some peas or some carrots
or make the chicken soup.
It made me feel really good about what I was doing.
About two and a half years into the apprenticeship,
we had a French restaurant from Dijon
come and cooked for a week in the hotel.
They did all these things I never saw.
I was so inspired by French cooking that I knew at that point,
I had to go to France and experience it and learn it.
(lively music)
WOLFGANG: I was 19 years old when I started at Baumanière,
a famous three-star restaurant in France.
They had like five French cooks there and I was the youngest one,
and I didn't speak French. It was pretty rough.
We had a huge farm there with six gardeners.
They brought the finest green beans or apricots or great melons.
So, we cooked with only the best ingredients.
The flavors felt so amazing, I had never experienced that.
This was a revelation for me.
Raymond Thuilier, the owner, was a perfectionist.
One day, he made a sauce and he said, "Taste it."
I tasted it and said, "Oh, I would put a little lemon juice and a little pepper."
He said, "Okay, put a little lemon juice and pepper."
He tasted it and he says, "Oh, good, much better."
He made me feel appreciated.
He made me feel like, "Ah, I can do that as well as anybody in the kitchen."
After that, Raymond Thuilier really became my mentor.
And I said, "I want to be a chef, I want to be like him."
(light music)
(indistinct chatter)
WOLFGANG: After I came to France,
my life started to take steps up, up, up all the time.
I was always thinking about the future.
I was still upset at my stepfather,
and did not want to have nothing to do with him.
So, I didn't talk to my family for a year and a half.
I never wrote a letter nor nothing.
I wanted to stay as far away from home as possible.
(tranquil music)
CHRISTINA:
(in German)
(sobs)
(in English) WOLFGANG: One day, at Baumanière,
the dishwasher says, "You know, I listen to the radio,
and the Austrian embassy in Paris is looking for you.
Nobody has any news, nobody knows where you are.
And they think you're dead."
And so I wrote my mother a note and said, "You know I'm in Provence.
I like it here and everything is fine. Don't worry."
I felt bad leaving my family but I said,
"I don't care what happened, I will never come back home."
(lively music)
Every kid dreams about coming to America.
WOLFGANG: In America, everybody is rich. Everybody drives a Cadillac.
So, when I was 24, I came to California.
I had very little money.
So, I found an apartment in a retirement home on Bunker Hill,
with my friend Guy,
cockroaches on the staircases and everything,
but what do you want for 80 bucks?
I got a job working in a restaurant. And I was the night chef there.
But it was like the opposite of Baumanière.
Things had to be flown in frozen, no fresh ingredients.
I got so many steaks back, and they said, "No, it's not well done enough."
And I said, "Oh, no, this is nothing I imagine.
This is terrible."
HENRY: This is Henry the magician. And here's your frozen food magic.
ANNOUNCER 1: Children often need between-meal snacks,
snacks like Hostess Twinkies.
They help your child go and grow.
ANNOUNCER 2: Stop!
You don't have to peel onions or mess with garlic.
Taste Tap push-button foods are here.
It's hard to remember today what food was like in America in the '70s.
RUTH: We were very ashamed.
We thought of American food as hamburgers, hot dogs,
we don't have anything good here.
People were used to tasteless tomatoes,
and produce that had no flavor and no aroma.
French chefs would come over and say,
"Oh, my god, I have to import everything from France."
In those days, restaurants were just about sauce and meat,
maybe a flaming dessert or something.
Food had gotten into a big rut.
WOLFGANG: After two months or so of working in the restaurants downtown,
I walked one day to get an espresso.
And all of a sudden, I see my friend from Paris,
and I said, "What the hell are you doing here?"
And he said, "Well, I'm working in a restaurant called Ma Maison."
The owner is the nephew of the owner of La Tour d'Argent,
three-star restaurant from Paris.
So, I said, "Wow, that must be an amazing restaurant."
Maybe you can help me find a job.
He got me a job as a cook at Ma Maison.
I was so excited.
But the first day I walked in,
and I see Astroturf on the floor and plastic chairs and everything.
Not even a walk-in refrigerator. They had refrigerators lined up outside.
I said, "Oh, my god, this is the nephew of the owner from La Tour d'Argent,"
(upbeat music)
Patrick was very arrogant.
He had always a nice suit on with the little carnation here,
and talked like he had the best restaurant in Los Angeles,
but it was nothing.
RUTH: Circa, 1979, 1980,
the restaurateur thought he was the guy.
And the chef was the blue-collar guy
toiling away in the kitchen, expendable.
PATRICK:
WOLFGANG: So, I start working there.
And two weeks later, I saw the worst review.
So, Patrick fired the chef there.
And he said, "Wolfgang, take over the restaurant and be the chef here."
I couldn't believe it.
But Ma Maison had a really bad reputation.
And boy, when I looked in that refrigerator,
the only food available was a frozen meat.
And I said, "Hell, no, I cannot cook like that."
(sizzles)
WOLFGANG: After I got the job, people laughed about it,
because there was nobody going to Ma Maison.
Everybody said, "Oh, my god, you made a mistake to go to this restaurant."
A lot of people think the grass is always greener somewhere else.
They say, "Well, I have a problem here, let's throw in the towel and quit."
But I believe the grass is greener where you water it the most.
If you put in the effort and put in the work, no it only can get better.
When I started at Ma Maison, the food was terrible.
So, I said, "How we gonna fix that?"
You start with the best product and then you don't screw it up.
TOM: In a wide-open space, 20 miles north of San Diego
sits a modest roadside stand.
By contrast, fancy cars line up at the shack six days a week.
They come to buy Tom Chino's produce,
the most carefully grown fruits and vegetables anywhere.
WOLFGANG: When I went the first time to the Chino Farm in Rancho Santa Fe,
and I saw all the vegetables there,
my eyes lit up and I said,
"Oh, my god, this is as good as Baumanière.
I can really cook."
(lively music)
RUTH: Wolf was the first person in L.A. to find the Chino Ranch.
He started using their fantastic produce.
Suddenly, he's serving this very simple food that's incredibly flavorful.
Making these salads that people would go "Oh, my god, this is a tomato?"
And that was really new.
The quality of the ingredients became so much a part of the food at Ma Maison.
Where's our tuna?
NANCY: He made a daily trip to the fish market.
He made a weekly two-hour-plus trip to pick up vegetables.
That was very, very unique.
LAURIE: He showed us how to make American food in a whole new way.
Bringing it all together and making it feel like this is California on a plate.
It's fantastic, you’re gonna love it, and bon appétit.
(laughs)
WOLFGANG: It was hard the first six months but I worked hard.
And little by little, the restaurant started to get better,
and I was so proud of it.
To get a table in the restaurant was pretty much almost impossible.
MICHAEL: Wolf was in the kitchen, never to be seen,
making food like none of us had ever eaten before.
But the restaurant really revolved around Patrick Terrail.
ROBIN: Hollywood's Ma Maison has terrific food
and an unlisted phone number.
It's one of Tinseltown's hottest lunch spots,
and nobody cares if the dining area is a former parking lot,
covered with Astroturf.
It's so popular that jetsetters jockey for a table,
and everyone wants to make friends with the waiters.
WOLFGANG: Working at Ma Maison was crazy.
So right now, with my lobster.
WOLFGANG: I would wake up early, go to the market downtown,
buy fresh ingredients and then drive to Ma Maison
where I worked from five in the afternoon until two or three in the morning.
We knew clubs who started to open up at two in the morning,
and we used to hang out until the day came up every day.
(upbeat music)
WOLFGANG: One night, I went to dance with a girl.
We talked and she said, "What do you do?"
And I said, "I'm a cook, I'm a chef." And she looked at me, "A cook?"
The song was over,
she left me on the dance floor and walked away from me.
I was like, "What? What did I do?"
I didn't even walk on her toes or anything.
So from then on, when I went to a club,
I always said I'm a racecar driver in Europe.
Okay, we're going to add our milk to our egg yolks and...
WOLFGANG: At that time, I was teaching cooking classes at Ma Maison.
And one day, I looked up while I was making my butter sauce,
and there in the back was Barbara. She's snacking.
BARBARA: I walked into the class and sat down.
Wolf looked up for a moment and he spotted me,
and he had a big, like a big wad of butter in his hands
and he proceeded to just drop it on the floor.
And things progressed rather quickly after that.
(tranquil music)
WOLFGANG: Barbara was the beautiful woman.
She was very outgoing and she was very smart and talented.
BARBARA: He was very sweet and he was very focused on what he was doing.
He was a little unattainable in certain ways, too.
The standard joke was, if I would dress up as a baby carrot,
little baby carrot, I'd probably get more attention.
But I like a challenge.
RUTH: Barbara was really the one pushing Wolf forward.
He was the genius and the chef.
But she was the one who saw it and said, "Don't undersell yourself.
You're really great."
(sizzles)
Voilà, you see it starts to get nice and brown.
Now, should you always put the skin down first?
-Does it make a difference? -Yeah, always the skin first.
Wolfgang was always telling me about his dreams and desires,
about work and wishes and he said,
"You know, one day I would really like to have my own restaurant."
And I said, "Yeah, really, you should."
Okay, we're gonna sauté all our vegetables now.
First, the bacon so the fat goes out.
BARBARA: One day, I found this check.
I said, "Wolf, is this your paycheck?" He said, "Yeah."
I said, "Is this all you make a week for working as hard as you do?
You should go in and ask Patrick to double the salary."
(dramatic music)
WOLFGANG: After I had been working there for six years, I went to see Patrick.
And Patrick said, "You know, maybe I make you a partner in the restaurant."
I said, "Good." "But I gonna pay you a little bit less."
Before I came to Ma Maison, Ma Maison was almost bankrupt.
And as soon as I started, we started to go uphill.
But Patrick took all the credit for it.
And he made me feel
like I'm not that important to the restaurant.
PATRICK:
Ma Maison was really my house.
You know, I build it from nothing.
I went to Patrick and I told him I want to be an equal partner.
It has to be fifty-fifty.
He pointed at me and said, "You know, I always gonna own 51 percent."
I pointed back on him and said, "Me too."
WOLFGANG: So that was that.
Then I said, "Now I have to leave."
I always wanted to open my own restaurant.
It was my dream.
But Ma Maison was the restaurant in L.A.
To leave at the pinnacle, it's crazy.
(somber music)
Patrick told the newspapers that I have no idea how to run a restaurant.
I'm only a cook and said,
"Wolfgang will come back in three months begging for a job."
WOLFGANG: I said, "My God, this is, like, déjà vu."
All these crazy words reminded me of my stepfather.
It made me feel like I'm gonna fail.
BARBARA: Wolf was very talented and passionate and focused,
but I don't think he thought enough of himself.
He was constantly having nightmares about what if this fails, what if this fails.
I was constantly telling him, "You can do it.
We can do this."
(tranquil music)
WOLFGANG: The whole time, I was so nervous.
Barbara was very supportive of it.
She had also confidence in me that I can make it work.
I think, Barbara helped me remember that I don't quit.
I don't give up easily.
He had no idea if he was gonna be able to actually run a business,
I mean, this was all new to him.
RUTH: But I think it was this moment, you know,
either you jump off the diving board,
or you resign yourself to standing in the back of the kitchen
with your white toque on for the rest of your life,
and he took the plunge.
BARBARA: Wolfgang found this restaurant space in Hollywood.
It was a dive. Such disrepair.
We had to get a blaster in there
to get three-inches thick grease off the walls
that had been there for 30 years.
I remember I was upside down scrubbing the gum off the bottom,
of all the old tables for days.
We didn't have a lot of money at the time, so we had to do what we could.
RUTH: Wolf's initial idea of opening Spago,
was that it was going to be this little pizza place,
like one he had gone to in Saint-Rémy in Provence,
checked tablecloths.
And Barbara was the one who said, "No...
Let's do something more ambitious."
BARBARA: I didn't have a lot of design experience but I had done theater sets,
and I thought cooking is a show.
It was theater and he was the star.
So, I called up 911, I said, "Could I have the number for the fire department?"
And all I said was, "Hello, sir, we're thinking of doing a restaurant,
that is going to have a wood-burning pizza oven on the kitchen line,
open in the restaurant, is that okay?"
And he says, "Sounds okay to me, lady."
And I hung up the phone, I turned to Wolf,
and I said we can do this.
(lively music)
The day of opening, the nails were still being pounded into the boards.
I don't even think the menu was done then.
The day we opened, we had just gotten our final approvals,
so I was able to turn on the stoves, get stocks going.
MARK: I'd been going for, like, about 40 hours without sleep.
They did not have electricity until four o'clock in the afternoon.
BARBARA: We were about to open that night,
and I'm still standing barefoot on top of the exhibition counter,
getting everything adjusted correctly,
food's still coming through the door, everybody's trying to get dressed.
And then the doors opened, and...
organized pandemonium.
(lively music)
WOLFGANG: To my surprise, from the first day,
it became an instant success.
It was an amazing feeling.
We had so many customers, so we were in the weeds every night.
RUTH: We have an 8:30 reservation,
and if you were lucky, maybe you'd get seated at 10.
I mean, you walked in there and the energy just came up.
We worked in the kitchen right up front, there was a lot of noise,
there was a lot of heat and flame.
We were making pizzas as fast as we possibly could.
BARBARA: You could smell the food wafting across the room.
You saw the excitement. You saw the food coming in and going out.
WOLFGANG: Everybody was asking about the food, what it was.
So, I went out and bought some pastel and designed my own menu.
And put on it Spago California Cuisine.
People loved it.
MICHAEL: He was making the best pizza, the best salad,
the best-grilled foods you could eat, all very healthy.
A lot of people called it "California cuisine."
I just called it "Wolfgang's kitchen."
(upbeat music)
Wolfgang was just such a huge personality and mostly because of that open kitchen.
JANNIS: There was no other restaurant like that.
Every night, we said the same thing, "Curtain up."
And I thought to myself, "Yeah, this is Spago."
A year after we opened, the New York Times wrote a piece,
"The Spagoization of Manhattan."
BARBARA: To realize that in one year,
that restaurant had affected the way people dine.
What casual environment putting the chefs on stage with open kitchens?
All of that, that was monumental.
(quirky music)
We're roasting this chicken today on the French Chef.
JULIA: You know, we speak of a covey of quail
and a gaggle of geese and a pride of lions.
Well, this is known as a peep of chickens.
MICHAEL: At that time in the '80s,
Julia Child was the only big chef who was on television.
You had a number of cooking shows,
particularly on local stations all over the country.
But no one had really gone national.
Carrots.
Mushrooms.
And these snails were brought into America from France as a food item.
Tofu, it doesn't have much personality in its raw form.
CHEF 2: It's simply begging to be flavored.
Wolfgang was recognized very quickly as an innovator.
You can't smell it on the camera.
MICHAEL: We were friends.
And I went in and one day I just said to him, "We think you should be on TV."
(indistinct chatter)
MICHAEL: I decided that the best way to get him on television,
was to take the president of ABC to dinner.
And I called Wolf up and he said, "What would you like me to do?"
We proceeded to have one of the all-time great-tasting menus in history.
(light music)
(sizzles)
And we proceeded to have a lot of wine.
MICHAEL: At the end of the dinner, I said,
"I think, it would be great to give Wolf, two or three appearances on GMA."
The guy said, "Sounds like a good idea."
Because I'm an agent, I pulled out a napkin,
and I wrote this all out on the napkin, dated it, and had him sign it.
And we had a contract.
One of the most celebrated chefs in Hollywood,
is a young man named Wolfgang Puck,
and he has cooked for all the rich and the famous from all over the world.
Today, he's going to cook for us and it's nice to have you with us.
-Thank you very much. -Welcome. What are you cooking?
We're going to make a luxurious hamburger today.
-All right. -We have here...
WOLFGANG: Being live for the first time on national television
was such a big deal for me.
...different, we have here a little bit of blue cheese.
I was confident in my cooking, but I was nervous looking at the cameras,
which camera to look at. I wanted it to be perfect.
So that way they ask me to come back.
Put it right in the middle and close it up.
MICHAEL: In those days, it was a very simple way
of defining what was successful,
by how many calls came into the switchboard at the network.
WOLFGANG: We're gonna sauté them really fast.
After the first appearance, we called everyone in our company,
and had them call every relative they had.
And the network lit up in L.A. and New York.
The switchboard lit up with people calling saying who is that cute little guy?
He's so fantastic, love those recipes, all scripted by us and it worked.
He just blew up like a movie star.
-(audience applause) -DAVID: Hi, how are you?
Best-selling pizza is the duck sausage pizza.
JOAN: That's what I'm talking about.
You want one too? Here.
-(laughs) -All right, good.
LAURIE: Wolf started doing every morning show
and late-night show.
All right, hi. The vegetables are here. How are you?
LAURIE: He could be with David Letterman and make jokes.
He just knew how to be himself, and you just loved him.
DAVID: Where do you get your recipes?
You know, I'm cooking for 25 years already so it's easy to make...
You're probably younger than I am, aren't you?
Oh, much younger, yeah.
JANNIS: Every journalist wanted to interview him constantly.
There were always photo shoots. It was nuts.
It's okay. We have enough for everybody.
RUTH: In the mid '80s, I went with him to Cleveland.
And I go with Wolf to rent a car
and the woman in the car rental says to him,
"My God, it's Wolfgang Puck, you're that chef."
And I thought, "Okay, the age of the celebrity chef has begun."
Hello, madam, how are you? I'm Wolfgang Puck.
No, you're not.
PATRICK:
(audience cheering)
Let's grill.
Good morning.
JANNIS: Wolfgang Puck deserves so much respect,
for how he transformed celebrity for chefs...
with TV shows, cook-offs.
He set the stage for all of that.
PAT: The Tom Cruise of chefs is Wolfgang Puck.
His own wedding was featured on The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
This is a cook we're talking about.
PATRICK:
Here we go with my old car here. My limousine is ready.
The place is Spago's, the legendary "in" restaurant
owned, operated by, and featuring the cuisine
of the equally legendary chef, Wolfgang Puck.
Puck's is a household name.
He is arguably the best-known, most successful chef of our time.
My dream really was to have one little restaurant, maybe write a cookbook.
And you've made more money at it than you ever dreamed you would.
Yeah, absolutely. And I live better than I ever thought I would live.
But you know, the money aspect is not what really drives me.
RUTH: Despite the fact that he was enormously successful,
enormously respected,
Wolf was still sort of stunned by his success.
When you caught him off guard, you would find that he was afraid.
That he'd be back in the basement peeling potatoes,
that, at any moment, you know, the coach was gonna turn back into a pumpkin.
So, he was not slowing down.
All right, now we're gonna start, huh?
BARBARA: I think, all those shows,
and all the press that started to be generated led to an explosion.
It was frenetic.
EMCEE: Your restaurateur of this year is Wolfgang Puck.
Every city he went to, somebody was like, "Come open here.
Come into business with us." Everybody wanted a piece of Wolf.
WOLFGANG: Johnny Carson used to come often to Spago.
One day, he said, "Can I take some pizzas to go?"
So, he took like a pile, like 10, 12 pizzas to go.
And by the second or third time, I said,
"Johnny, what are you doing with my pizzas?"
He says, "I put them in the freezer, I just loved it." What the heck?
So out of that, really started my frozen pizza business.
RUTH: Wolfgang was the first chef since Chef Boyardee,
to say, "What if I take my food,
and make it available to people who are home cooks?"
After that, he became a brand.
REPORTER 3: World-renowned chef Wolfgang Puck.
REPORTER 4: Wolfgang Puck.
Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck.
LAURIE: Every month,
there seemed to be a new restaurant opening throughout California.
And then around the world.
It was like how is he everywhere?
Beautiful set we get to talk about.
BARBARA: We opened Spago Las Vegas,
and then we started building cafés.
Things just kept blossoming and blossoming and blossoming.
Now, that's what I call fusion. I could sell them on the Internet.
(smooches)
WOLFGANG: Everything was running at a hundred miles an hour.
Everything was a huge success, beyond my greatest dreams.
But I still always felt that something is missing.
So good to have you here in Atlanta, no less.
In Atlanta. You are so busy. You got the frozen pizza line.
You got 63 restaurants, you got all this stuff,
you got a new four-month-old baby.
I think, it keeps me busy, keeps me out of trouble that way.
I guess so.
When I thought about becoming a father,
and how I gonna treat my children especially, I was so nervous.
The last thing I wanted to be is like my stepfather.
WOLFGANG: But Barbara had always wanted to start a family.
So, when our first child came, I was already 40 years old.
A few years later I had a second child.
But I also was expanding like crazy at that time.
BARBARA: I think, because we were building a business and he was always so nervous,
about things not going right,
primarily, the caretaking of the children fell to me mostly.
He was always at the restaurants.
WOLFGANG: Certain nights, I say, "Listen, I shouldn't be in the restaurant.
I should be at home with my son."
But, you know, I think, we try to juggle both of them,
to spend time with him and to also spend time at the restaurant,
because we feel like the restaurants are also our children.
(somber music)
MICHAEL: I felt that he was spread way too thin.
I tried to get him to focus on fewer things,
but he did what he wanted to do.
He tried to do everything.
INTERVIEWER: How much time do you spend in the kitchen?
Are there days when you don't cook anything yourself?
You know, there are days when I have to talk with accountants
-and with lawyers and... -Reporters.
Yeah, no, and that's my worst day probably.
BYRON: When I was growing up, my dad was always working.
I remember being in elementary school and going to Spago,
four nights out of the week for dinner, just so I could have a family dinner.
It was hard to see him.
BARBARA: I could not get his attention
because he was busy doing this and busy doing that.
I said, "If you want a relationship and you want to really know your kids,
you're gonna have to be there some time."
I have a new thing in the office over there for you.
What is that?
Well, your idea of a plaisanterie and my idea of a plaisanterie
are two different things so...
NANCY: Working with Wolf and Barbara,
I don't know if I've ever had worked with such a team before.
Together, the two of them made something
that I don't think anybody else had done before.
But at that time,
journalists were so captivated by Wolfgang
and his winning personality
that what was hard for Barbara,
is that she worked every bit as hard as Wolfgang
and she didn't get the attention.
And I think that wore her down.
(somber music)
BYRON: As a kid, I didn't understand like what divorce was.
I didn't understand that my dad wasn't going to be in the house anymore.
Until I went to school on the first day of second grade,
and my mom walked me into school and she turned me around,
and she was like very serious with me for a second.
She was just like, "If anyone says anything about your parents
or what's going on at home, don't say anything to them.
You don't need to. Don't get angry with them.
Just leave it alone, and you can talk to me about it."
WOLFGANG: When we got divorced, it was really hard.
Barbara was always very supportive of me.
She always believed in me.
Often I would sit at Spago, looking out the window...
and ask myself, who am I?
Am I a chef?
Am I a restaurant?
Am I a character?
Am I a guy who has never enough?
(dramatic music)
(speaking German)
(laughs)
(sniffs)
(dramatic music)
(Christina in German)
(in English) WOLFGANG: My whole life
I had this fear of failure.
I had this fear of going backwards.
I always had this desire to be successful,
do more and do better.
But at the end of the day,
I didn't really know who I was or what it was for.
(dramatic music)
BARBARA: Our childhood memories are visceral memories.
Those memories of Austria are part of his DNA.
Not all of them are good memories.
But part of me always felt that maybe by doing this,
by cooking, maybe you're rewriting your story.
Wolfgang didn't start out because he knew one day he would have a food company,
and a TV show, and restaurants around the world.
NANCY: He started out because he loved to cook,
and this was his life and his passion.
(Christina in German)
(in English) WOLFGANG: I spent my whole life
hating my stepfather,
and trying to prove him wrong.
But looking back, sometimes, I think,
maybe that whole thing made me stronger.
I realized all this time,
I wasn't running away from anything.
I was going after the thing I love to do.
(fire crackles)
WOLFGANG: We all make mistakes when we go through life.
Looking back and say, "I should have, I could have",
that's not gonna get me anywhere.
I just think if you spend the time talking about the past,
you forget to talk about the future,
what are the possibilities, what can we do next?
So, when I moved Spago from West Hollywood to Beverly Hills,
I said, "What are we gonna do different? I have to do something different."
When I was at Ma Maison, we made modern French food.
I opened Spago, was like a mixture of California.
Then Chinois was Asian.
But Austria, it's where I fell in love with cooking.
And yet, I never cooked Austrian food actually.
I said, "You know what? I'm gonna put something Austrian on the menu."
(lively music)
WOLFGANG: For me as a child,
I remember the wiener schnitzel my mother used to make.
I remember she made a soup with liver dumplings that I used to love
or the palatschinken, or kaiserschmarrn.
These were things I remember the most about our family,
the positive part of our family.
RUTH: You know, we all have the taste of our childhood in our heads.
And when he made the menu at Spago Beverly Hills,
it's like I'm gonna put my dish on there,
and I don't care if it even goes with the rest of the Spago menu,
I'm gonna put it on there.
And of course, we all order it all the time because it's fantastic.
(lively music)
Wolfgang does so many things.
NANCY: But I always knew that he was never more comfortable
than in his chef jacket, in front of a stove.
That's when Wolfgang feels like Wolfgang.
I think Wolfgang's greatest impact is the joy that he brings to cooking.
MICHAEL: There's a warmth wherever he is.
He just generates it. He walks into a room and it lights up.
People say food is medicine. For Wolf, food is the conduit of love.
WOLFGANG: To my big surprise, wiener schnitzel was a huge success.
Everybody loved it.
In a way, it reminded me, that for me, food is family.
Making people feel happy is my purpose in life.
WOLFGANG: I think, it's interesting, you know, how we live our life.
We forget how short it is actually, you know?
So, I think, now I'm a little bit more stingy with my time.
CREW:
Oh, because I only have that many summers left, really.
How we do, all right?
-CHEF 3: Great, chef. Yes, chef. -What we having, bread?
-CHEF 4: Bread, brioche. -Brioche.
-CHEF 5: Hi, chef! -What are we making?
We're making chocolate, jumbo chocolate chip cookies.
-But make them really dark, huh? -Yes, chef.
-No white, no more white cookies. -No white cookies.
Yeah.
WOLFGANG: When people ask me what I'm the most proud of,
it's really longevity.
How's the tuna? Get me a little of that.
WOLFGANG: Staying in business for so many years,
it really takes a lot of hard work.
-Don't go when cooking, okay? -Yes, chef.
WOLFGANG: I think, we always have to continue to change.
And I really believe we get new ideas often from the younger ones.
(Wolfgang mumbles)
WOLFGANG: Now, I have the pleasure and the luxury
to have so many talented young chefs,
like my son, Byron.
-What, are you gonna put the egg in there? -Yeah.
-Let's do that. -Okay here, I'll help you.
Thank you.
-Hopefully, I don't put the shells in. -Nailed it.
BYRON: I stared working at Spago as a 13-year-old, peeling potatoes.
And seeing him there as the kind of leader was just amazing for me to watch as a kid.
Everything he did, I wanted to do it.
I felt very comfortable in this environment,
and it felt like something I could really,
really put my heart into, and spend the rest of my life doing.
(sizzles)
-A little more. -Okay, yeah, make it nice and crispy.
Yeah.
BYRON: Now, I get to be passionate not only about the same thing,
but I get to have one of the best teachers in the world helping me along the way.
That remind me that sound that my mother used to make.
Yeah. (chuckles)
RUTH: The fact that Byron really wants to be in the business,
I don't think there could be greater joy for Wolf than that,
I mean, to have a son who wants to follow in his footsteps.
I think, it's huge for him.
-Folks, we enjoying ourselves over here? -CUSTOMER: We are.
Doing well?
As a younger chef, I think, I was so absorbed in my profession,
of becoming successful that I neglected my duty as a father.
WOLFGANG: But now, it's a great thing to work with my son in the business.
And I think for a father, there's nothing better than seeing your kids successful.
-GELILA: No, seriously. -Put down the cutting board right there.
Who wants to be sous-chef, because I hate cutting onions, seriously.
Okay, I do.
-That is the best use of Wolfgang Puck. -Okay.
-Exactly. Cut two onions. -Okay.
Look at that, I'm the chopper of the onions.
ALEXANDER: I actually think I should be the one.
Okay, you're going to start it with the tip on the board like that.
And push through so it makes it really easy.
-OLIVER: Si, señor. -Yeah.
-(laughing) -BYRON: Here, use this.
But it kinda tastes good, though.
WOLFGANG: When I look back today
and ask what could I have done different?
For sure it was spend more time with the family.
I really missed my kids growing up.
BYRON: Uh, well, you have to go on Sundays.
-Thankfully, I've never... -(Alexander groans)
-It is good. -GELILA: I still need a lot.
-That's fine. That's fine. -No, don't take my cheese. Hey.
WOLFGANG: But I'm now married to Gelila, and we have two young boys.
So, now, I know how precious time is.
-No kisses. -(laughs)
BYRON: Y'all ready to eat?
(both laugh)
-GELILA: Here's to my boys. -Cheers.
All right, good job, Byron.
-Cheers, sir. -Cheers.
GELILA: At the end of the day, you have to live by an example.
Wolf's experience pushed him towards love,
to reconnect as a family and become the person he wants to become.
That he's able to influence not only his children,
but also anyone who is able to overcome challenges.
I think, that's a beautiful story.
(light music)
BYRON: I don't think there's better examples of truly coming from nothing,
and building something incredible than Wolfgang Puck.
I think, the real moral of Wolf's story is believe in yourself.
Know what you're good at, take chances and you can be a success.
RUTH: Today, there are hundreds of thousands,
if not millions of people who work in kitchens,
who aspire to be Wolfgang Puck and who will take heart from his story.
(all cheer)
The most important lesson I learned from Wolfgang is not to be afraid.
His dedication, willingness to sacrifice is what made him what he is.
-We've gotta lean forward, it's very hot. -The knife is...
(laughs)
Hot.
BARBARA: I think, Wolf's legacy is in and of itself love.
If you lead with your heart and your mind,
and if you love what you do...
that's a life well lived.
WOLFGANG: I really believe we have to have purpose in life.
Nothing comes easy, but if you believe in something,
you have to follow your dreams.
I hope I will end up doing the thing I love to do
until I take my last breath.
(closing theme music)