“When I started at L’Oustau de Baumanière [in Provence], the owner and chef said [to me], ‘Do you know how to cook?’ For sure I know how to cook. I’ve been doing it five years. When you are young, you think five years is an eternity,” laughs Wolfgang Puck, describing his early, cocksure years as an apprentice.
“He said, ‘Make me an omelet.’ I’m making an omelet and I put it on the plate and he looked at it and threw the plate with the omelet in the garbage can. He said, ‘You don’t even know [how to make an egg].’”
Chef Puck is standing beneath an impressive collection of small works by Robert Motherwell and Jasper Johns at his new WP Kitchen + Bar on El Paseo in Palm Desert. Formerly the site of Wolfgang Puck Pizza, the space has undergone total renovation from the dining room to the dining fare. Chef says he received a lot of comments from his Spago Beverly Hills customers with homes here in the desert who urged him to create a more upscale restaurant with “a good drink and some interesting food.”
VIDEO: Watch and contrast the omelet making skills of Wolfgang Puck and Palm Springs Life Editor Kent Black.
He has obliged them with appetizers like Spanish grilled octopus and mains including a pink snapper Veracruz and an outstanding 35-day dry aged New York strip steak.
We discuss Chef’s long hours in the test kitchen developing the dishes for this possible new direction for his 80 or so “casual” Wolfgang Puck restaurants around the world. We discuss how great food must start with basics, just as future great chefs must start by learning the basics.
Three years ago he was a judge on Top Chef, and part of his job was to give his six chefs a specific task. The one who failed was “fired” from the show. “I said, ‘OK, you have to make an omelet.’ I had six chefs and not one could make an omelet. I went to the producer. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I fired them all?’ She said, ‘Just fire the worst one.’ I said, ‘It [is] hard to choose.’”
Wolfgang Puck trades cooking secrets with Palm Springs Life editor Kent Black.
Some critics might accuse a chef like Wolfgang Puck of having grown away from the kitchen in favor of expanding his empire. But after spending just a few minutes with the Austrian-born maestro, I have no doubt that the passion that drove him to apprentice at the best restaurants in France when he was only 14, that led him to take over the kitchen at the fabled Ma Maison in Los Angeles when he was 24, still burns.
While Alice Waters was revolutionizing cuisine with local products and ingredients at her Berkeley restaurant, Puck was performing a parallel service for his customers in West Hollywood. Ma Maison begat Spago, it begat Chinoise on Main, and the offspring multiplied. There was Postrio in Las Vegas, Spago at the Ritz-Carlton in Bachelor Gulch, Colorado, CUT at the Beverly Wilshire … the list seems endless.
Chef suggests we go into the WP kitchen for an omelet competition. The notion of engaging in a cooking competition with Wolfgang Puck, uber chef, is totally absurd. It’s still absurd as I stand in the blazing hot kitchen, whisking fork in hand, dodging sous chefs scurrying out of the way, in the middle of the lunch rush, under Puck’s orders.
Wolfgang Puck helps guide Kent Black in making an omelet.
Chef goes first. He deftly cracks three eggs into a plastic bowl and whips them briskly with a fork. He adds a touch of cream and pinch of salt and pepper.
“Not too frothy. You want them mixed well so that way you don’t have spots of eggs whites and egg yolk,” he says as the pan heats and the butter crackles. “An omelet does not have to be light. It has to be soft. It’s like cooking a steak, where you cook the steak nice and seared on the outside and tender inside.”
The actual cooking happens in a flash. Chef manages to melt a little olive oil and butter, and just before it turns brown, he introduces the eggs. He scrambles them, and lifts the pan off the flame before the egg has a chance to set. He sprinkles on a bit of Parmesan and a few strips of speck (like prosciutto, but smoked), then sets the pan back on the flame. He tilts it, bangs on the handle, and folds half over itself.
Tilting the pan the other way, he folds the other half to close what is now an omelet. Then, using an underhand grip on the handle of the pan, he flips the omelet onto the plate, folded side down.
My turn. Seems I forgot how to crack an egg. I muddle through that critical step, and through the rest of the process of turning what a chicken no longer wants into a meal a human does.
We place our omelets side by side, and take a bite of each. They are remarkably — maybe even supernaturally — similar. Wait! Is this possible? Chef asks me if I want to start working in the WP Kitchen + Bar tomorrow.
Does the gig come with a meal plan?
Like most people who know Puck, or regularly eat his distinctive creations, I’m caught in the magic of perfection, in the cloud of can-do fairy dust he sprinkles wherever he goes. I’m Joan Collins, and Swifty Lazar, who, 30 years ago in Hollywood, swooned at their first bite of Puck pizza with smoked salmon and caviar. I’m swooning today over a couple of speck and cheese omelets.
I must be teacher’s pet, because I got more than a cooking lesson, I got a life lesson. “Sex is the most important thing in life,” Chef says. “Making love and have great food … that really is what life is all about.”