“The thing that makes me proud is longevity,” Wolfgang Puck told the crowd at the Generational Tasting Tour dinner on April 30. Cut it in Las Vegas.
A celebrity chef was there The Venetian casino-lounge to cook alongside his son, Byron Lazaroff-Puck, and demonstrate the importance of both tradition and creativity. Wolfgang has seen many competing restaurants come and go since he opened Chinois in Los Angeles more than 40 years ago, and he reminded guests of his legacy on Thursday as he served up his beloved Chinois oysters with curry and salmon roe, before belting out some of his greatest hits from his varied repertoire. Kärntner käsnudel, a cheese-filled pasta filled with caviar, pays homage to his Austrian heritage and his mother’s cooking. The angry Chinois lobster showed how Puck excelled in the perfect combination meal.
Byron, on the other hand, showcased the skills he honed at world-renowned restaurants such as Baumanière, Alinea and Le Bernardin as he combines new dishes with local ingredients. He evoked the desert with Nevada beets and nopales in a well-crafted dish that also showcased the sugar-making skills he learned at El Celler de Can Roca. Guests at the dinner included Michelin-starred chef Phillip Frankland Lee, who was in town for a major poker tournament. Lee marveled at the pastrami foie gras Byron served alongside a Liberty Farms duck breast with sour cherry and bourbon.
As guests enjoyed Wolfgang’s apricot strudel and Byron’s black forest cherry dessert, there was a loud cry in the back of the dining room. A guest had proposed to his date, and she said yes as Wolfgang stood nearby and saw another memory being made in one of his restaurants.
The Pucks will be making all kinds of memories as they embark on a global tour of their Generational Tasting tour. Byron told the Observer he’s excited that sponsorship support from Doordash (which has seen a big boost in bookings after buying SevenRooms for $1.2 billion last year) allows him to buy the best seasonal ingredients in different cities.
Earlier on Thursday, the Pucks spoke extensively with the Observer about the Generational Tasting Tour and how they constantly balance tradition and innovation. Wolfgang, who is 76 years old, still receives five newspapers worldwide on Saturdays. And the Generational Tasting Tour menu that guests received was a 16-page booklet inspired by the newspaper. But there was a QR code that you could scan to give you an extra three times the truth of the cover art on your phone.
Byron uses the AI chatbot Claude every day to help improve business at his family’s restaurants, and Wolfgang will be fine with chefs testing AI to create recipes.
“If something is delicious and I want to eat it again and again, I don’t care how someone puts the recipe together,” Wolfgang told the Observer. “AI can give you all these ideas, but you still have to cook them right. At the end of the day, it’s execution.”
The Generational Tasting Tour may mean Wolfgang is ready to pass the torch, but he has no plans to retire anytime soon. He could imagine himself in the kitchen for another 50 years.
“That makes me 126,” he said. “I’d be fine with that. I’ve signed a lease on my life for a long time.”
He recently started painting, but he doesn’t know what he would do with the rest of his time when he retires. So he plans to stick around and remind his son and staff what Wolfgang Puck’s food was, is and should be.
“I think the thing that my father kept from him all his life is that we don’t want to make our food difficult,” said Byron. “We want it to look good. But most importantly, it has to taste good. It’s all about highlighting the ingredients in the best possible way. ‘Buy good ingredients, and don’t mess with them’ is Wolfgang Puck’s ever-present saying.”
The ethos behind the food remains the same, but Pucks is always looking for new technologies and platforms. They love working with DoorDash because it puts Spago in a digital marketplace that reaches customers it never had before.
“It’s about creating an experience,” Byron said. “People buy things they enjoy the same way they buy clothes online.”
“I think apps and learning how to connect with new people is a really important way for us in the restaurant business,” Wolfgang said. “If we want to continue to be successful, this is the way we must go.”
Technology, of course, now plays a major role in customer retention.
“I always tell the story of Bernard [Erpicum]our original maître d’ at Spago,” Byron said.” “He knew every diner who walked into the restaurant by name, he knew the table he liked, he knew his favorite wine and his favorite food. It was that predictable style of service that you look for in good food. And what SevenRooms in its CRM allows us to do is train all our teams to be like Bernard.”
It also allows the Pucks to keep tabs on what’s going on in Los Angeles as they travel the world. There are 14 stops on the Generational Tour, including Istanbul, Singapore, Bodrum, Shanghai, London and New York.
In Las Vegas, DoorDash (which has large billboards on the Strip promoting some of its partner restaurants) is also working with The Venetian on Culinary Crossroads. This is a series of high-quality, storytelling-based dining events featuring the resort’s celebrity chefs. In addition to the Puck dinner and the previous event with Thomas Keller of Bouchon, the Venetian has announced a live show for May 31 and a dinner with José Andrés of Bazaar Meat. This evening will be inspired by the future of the chef Spain My Way a cookbook. More Culinary Crossroads events will be announced soon.
“We’re working with our partners at Cote and Wakuda to create experiences, and there’s more to come,” Julian Griffiths, SVP of food and beverage at The Venetian, tells the Observer. “We try to do one-night, one-of-a-kind events. It’s an opportunity for guests to really understand and see the creative process and the stories that go into the food. What makes it special for us is that intimacy.”
Like the Pucks, the Venetian seeks to reflect both tradition and innovation. This is a resort where newcomers like Gjelina, Scarr’s Pizza and Howlin’ Ray’s share the spotlight with Puck, Keller and Emeril Lagasse. Three very different meat houses (Cote, Bazaar Meat and Boa) opened in the casino last year.
“Marriage is the legacy of who we are and the foundation we have and what our future holds,” said Griffiths. “But all these chefs are improving.
And Wolfgang Puck, who recently thought a lot about how mixing colors in paintings is like mixing ingredients to make a recipe, is a living example of a Venetian chef who won’t quit.
“I know that many older people have problems with change,” says Wolfgang. “I like change. You have to change when you’re at the top. You can’t change when business goes down. Then it’s late. Cooking is a continuous evolution. I think it’s very important to keep developing, to do new things, to make people happy with new dishes.”
