Wolfgang Puck

Puck is famous for opening Spago in 1982, which invented California cuisine and made him the most influential chef in American food culture at the time. He is also famous for his smoked salmon pizza, for catering the Academy Awards Governor's Ball every year since 1994, and for building one of the most successful culinary business empires in America.

California cuisine, pioneered by Puck and Alice Waters in the late 1970s and early 1980s, is a cooking style that combines French technique with local Californian produce, Asian ingredients, and a casual elegance that replaced the formal service of classical French fine dining.

Puck created it at Spago in the early 1980s as a hommage to bagels and lox — a thin, crisp wood-fired pizza topped with crème fraîche, smoked salmon, red onion and chives. It became Spago's signature and the dish most associated with the birth of the designer pizza category.

Puck is still active as the head of Wolfgang Puck Companies — he oversees the menus, makes regular kitchen visits and continues to lead the Academy Awards Governor's Ball catering personally each year. The day-to-day cooking at his many restaurants is handled by his trained executive chefs.

Since 1994. The Academy Awards Governor's Ball — the official post-ceremony party for nominees and winners — has been catered by Wolfgang Puck and his team every year for over three decades, making it one of the longest-running exclusive catering relationships in entertainment.

Born and trained in Austria, Puck moved to the United States in 1973 and became a naturalised American citizen. He maintains close ties to Austria and frequently incorporates Austrian dishes — Wiener schnitzel, Kaiserschmarrn — into his Spago menus.