Wolfgang director David Gelb on the documentary's overarching theme: 'It’s a story about a vulnerable young man who was running away from his home. And then he found something to run toward, something that he really loved'
Puck as the ebullient proprietor of celebrity-saturated Spago, purveyor of frozen pizzas to the masses and ubiquitous presence on TV magazine shows. But before all he blazed the trail as one of the first true celebrity chefs, there was an uncertain boy who grew up in a poor Austrian family with a difficult stepfather, who left to work in France at just 14 years old before coming to Hollywood.
Longtime Angelenos might remember Puck cooking for the likes of Orson Welles at Ma Maison, who introduced the then-radical concept of farm-fresh produce to the French menu before quitting to open his own restaurant, Spago, in 1982. Gelb talks about Puck’s influence with food world figures like Ma Maison proprietor Patrick Terrail, super-agent, chefs Nancy Silverton and Evan Funke, former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl and early Spago maître’d Jannis Swerman, now a restaurant publicist.
The food culture was not up to par with Europe. It seemed like a big breakthrough that Wolf brought to Ma Maison was using fresh ingredients, making the produce kind of the center of the dish, rather than just the technique and the sauce. And in doing so, he started to infuse the story behind the food that he was serving, by telling “this is where these vegetables come from, they come from the Chino farm.
It was important to include that part of the story, because that’s the turning of the dynamic between restaurateur and chef, where before the restaurateur was the star. Now the chef is the story, the chef very often is the restaurant. He was quite gracious, said many nice things about Wolfgang. He has great admiration for his friend, and they had reconciled.Wolfgang didn’t leave on great terms.
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