Hungry for Wolfgang Puck? Kelly dishes it out

Above: Chef Wolfgang Puck is the star of a new HBO Max show, "The Event." (Photo: HBO)

If you were going to imagine the name of a world-renowned chef, could you do better than Wolfgang Puck? I doubt it.

Puck, the Austrian-born culinary master, has become a brand all unto himself. Think of it. You have not just Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, but Wolfgang Puck Catering and Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc.

The result is a realm that Puck, who has been working in one kitchen or another since the age of 14 (he’s now 71), oversees – or, in any event, oversees as well as anyone can who is stretched further than most of us can even dream.

That stretch, however, doesn’t extend so far that he can’t take the time to talk to the occasional journalist. Especially when he’s trying to drum up publicity for his newest project, the HBO Max show “The Event: Inside Wolfgang Puck Catering.”

Puck spoke with Leslie Kelly, my former Spokesman-Review colleague and now freelance writer who writes for Forbes.com. You can access the full story by clicking here.

A couple of samplers from Kelly’s story: One, Puck insisted that the show feature “his seasoned crew.”

“I agreed to do the show if we could tell the truth,” he said. “I’m not always there in the kitchen, cooking, going to parties, but I trust my team 100 percent to represent me by doing their very best.”

Two, he expects mistakes and he expects the lessons from them to be applied to future work.

“Everybody screws up,” he said. “I’ve screwed up. But I don’t want to hear excuses. I want to know you’ve learned from your mistakes.”

Check out the entire story. It just might make you hungry for more.