'Eating a Bone-In Filet and Listening to Pink Floyd': My Lunch With Wolfgang

Wolfgang Puck: He has a few things to say about the new president, the governor of California, and not using old olive oil. Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

 

by Todd Kliman

Yesterday, I sat down to lunch with the irrepressible and always busy — 300 days on the road every year — Wolfgang Puck.

He'd breezed into the nation's capital for a wine dinner at the D.C. outpost of his 95-restaurant empire, The Source. The sleek, Asian-themed restaurant is a favorite of President-elect Barack Obama's, and a short stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

Having long since built a reputation as the chef to the stars — his Oscar and Grammy parties are legendary, Spago remains the neighborhood restaurant for Hollywood royalty, and Sidney Poitier is the godfather to his children — Puck seems well positioned to be the go to chef in Hollywood-on-the-Potomac, if the predicted New Camelot materializes.

Over a three-hour-plus lunch at the excellent Ethiopian bistro Etete — a fitting choice, since Puck's new bride is Ethiopian — we feasted on lentil-filled sambusas and the Ethiopian beef tartare called kitfo, and the elfin master chef weighed in on a range of topics including: Obama, Schwarzenegger, foie gras, the faltering economy, Jessica Seinfeld, Leo DiCaprio, and his secrets for the perfect Thanksgiving turkey.

On Obama
"I hope for Obama that he will be interested in food. You had Clinton walking around with a hamburger, and I hope you don't see that. You know, I cooked for Obama in L.A. at David Geffen's. It's exciting. I think more than anything for me, it's how America is changing by not reelecting a follower of George Bush. I think in the long run it will do us a lot of good. I hope he'll be good for food. If the president goes out for good food, it sets a great example."

More about...well, everything, after the jump...

On what he would do if appointed to a Cabinet post
"I would subsidize all the organic farmers. And tell them: We're going to help you. But you have to make better food for children. And then I would give loans to the cooks who go to the culinary schools. The way they pay back those loans, they go and teach in the schools for a while, in the junior highs and elementary schools. Start as early as possible."

On changes in food and food culture over the past 25 years
"I think the problem in America is, nobody can cook at home anymore. I think restaurant-wise it's really interesting. I came here 30 years ago. Very few American chefs owned their own restaurants. Now look. It's been a steamroller in food and wine.

"And now all these kids who would have been doctors and lawyers are now cooking. The biggest development is that influence -- whereas before it wasn't a profession, it wasn't something people talked about doing. And the media plays such a part in this. The kids come out of cooking school and they call themselves 'chef.' If you go to Harvard Medical School, and you come out and take a job, I'm not going to have you replace my hip.

"I remember going to a club in L.A. in 1975, 1976, with a friend of mine, an Austrian race car driver. I was dancing with this girl, and she said: What do you do? I said: I'm a cook. As soon as the song was over, she went away. But the bottom line: If you look where we were 30 years ago, I don't think there's any country that has ever made that much progress in that short a time."

On what fine dining ought to be
"We opened Spago in '81-'82. I wanted a restaurant that had good food but was casual. It was noisy. It was fun. I wanted to have a restaurant where I wanted to go. Also, to have the open kitchen, so everybody could see we were clean, they could see how we do things.

"Food should be an adventure. It's exciting. It's life. Most of the people think a high-end restaurant has to be stuffy, but who wants to sit in a formal setting? I go to some restaurants and I think: Jesus Christ, I hate the music. So in my restaurants we play Pink Floyd, we play Led Zeppelin, the Doors, my favorites. There's nothing better than eating a bone-in filet and listening to Pink Floyd."

On the future of restaurants in the tanking economy
"I hope that restaurant customers are like the Irish. The Irish say: When we're happy, we drink. When we're not happy, we drink more. Well, when we're not happy, I hope we eat more. I think one of the big things is, people will spend less on wine. And the big companies are cutting back. We're seeing it already -- there are less Christmas parties on the books at our restaurants. It doesn't look good."

On his philosophy for running a restaurant
"It has to be memorable. It has to be fun: 'I want to have that dish again.' I always tell my restaurants: 'We don't have to create great meals. We have to create memorable dishes.' I was in Paris in July, and I ate at a number of three-star places. I had a great meal at Pierre Gagnaire. But I can't tell you what I had. We want you to remember specific dishes, and go away thinking about them."

On California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (a fellow Austrian) as eater
"A medium eater, not a good eater. I don't think he has the palate for a good restaurant, so for him, medium is good. He talks a lot about exercise. But food and nutrition are more important."

On the perils of raising kids
"My son had his bar mitzvah recently. He wanted In-n-Out Burger. He loves In-n-Out Burger. All the time, that's all he wants. I said: No, think how that'll look. We made our own."

On Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook, Deceptively Delicious, which advocates sneaking veggies into dishes
"I think it's the stupidest thing. Why hide it? If kids see you eat vegetables, they'll eat vegetables. If you make it colorful and tasty, they'll like it. It's silly. If you expose them and not push them, they will eat what you eat."

On foie gras
"We don't serve it in 1 1/2 years. It's a tradition in France and many places, but you have to remember, we didn't have foie gras in this country until about 15 years ago. I told the producers: Maybe you have to find another way to feed the ducks. A more humane way. I ate so much foie gras in my life, I don't miss it a second. It's already boring, anyway. Every restaurant has foie gras."

On the Food Network
"The Food Network is going the way now where there should be another Food Network. With real professionals. At the end, it should be chefs, or chefs with personalities. Where the food is still important. Now I feel the food is not important."

On celebrity eaters
"Leo DiCaprio surprises me. He comes and says, 'I want a tasting menu.' And he really likes it. He likes to sit there and enjoy. He's the last one I would have thought. And some of the rappers, too. Jay-Z, he loves good food. Denzel Washington, he loves wine, good wine. When he comes, he has his little guidebook: 'What are the good years?' Whoopi Goldberg, she loves wine, too: 'Oh, I love that Petrus!' Most of the people don't really know much. They like it, but ..."

On stocking a pantry at home
"I think buy less and buy good. Most of the people, they have all these spices and oils, and they don't use it. I say: good olive oil and good vinegar, and the rest, it's mainly fresh things. What I hate is, going to people's houses and their pantries are so full. All these old spices and oils. I went for a dinner at this home, and the woman, she made pasta and I said: 'S--t, the oil!' She must've been using old olive oil."

On making the perfect Thanksgiving turkey
"I'm going to make turkey for 24. I'm going to do two turkeys, actually. One turkey so people can see it, it looks nice and golden and brown. I'm going to brine that. And that will be the turkey mainly for sandwiches.

"The other turkey, I'm going to cut the legs and thighs off, take out the bone and joints and do a roulade -- roll the meat with a stuffing of breadcrumbs and chestnuts. Roll it up, tie it, sear it and roast it. The breast I'm going to do separately, roast it and then finish it at 150 degrees to slow cook. That way, it's easy and you don't have to worry about the breast meat being dry, or the breast is fine but the legs are not cooked properly."

Todd Kliman is a James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic and the food and wine editor of Washingtonian magazine. The Wild Vine, his book about the Rosetta stone of American wine, is due in 2009.