Forget all those ideas you might have about Hollywood stars not eating. With one “posh” exception, most of the celebrities chef Wolfgang Puck has cooked for over the last three decades are big fans of food, and not nearly as picky as they are made out to be.
Ok, so David Beckham asks for his Wagyu steak well-done — and his wife only eats steamed vegetables — but Puck, who this week opened his first restaurant, CUT, in Dubai, is an easy-going guy.
“I’m totally easygoing,” the US-Austrian chef told me in the sunny dining room of his steakhouse at The Address Downtown last Thursday. “I figured out a happy life is a happy wife.”
Puck may be best known to those outside the US as the man who has been catering the post-Oscars party for 20 years, making chicken pot pies (Barbra Streisand’s favourite) and gold-dusted chocolate Oscar statues for starving celebrities.
“We make 30 different dishes, in very small portions. When you don’t eat all day, you want something comforting, more so than eating raw fish,” he says with a laugh. So was he annoyed when host Ellen Degeneres ordered pizza halfway through the show this year? “It was a joke, I was just pi**ed off and said, ‘why didn’t you order the pizza from me?’ She said, ‘oh I forgot you make pizza!’”.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q: Tell us the about CUT.
A: Cut is a modern American-style steakhouse. Steakhouses generally look like old men’s clubs. We want to be a rock’n’roll steakhouse. We want people to have fun, we want it to be lively, it’s not at all like a fancy restaurant. The only thing that’s important is what’s on your plate. You can have little appetisers — if you don’t want to eat in the restaurant, you can have a few mini burgers. Or if you say, ok, let’s have a steak, you come with three girlfriends, have a steak, slice it up and share.
Q: What are the don’t miss items on the menu?
A: We have really interesting appetisers, which a normal steakhouse doesn’t have. They just have salads. We have a bone marrow flan, a beef sashimi, little ravioli with spring peas, because peas are in season. The meat is our main feature but not our only feature. Also for the people that don’t eat meat, we have lobster, Dover sole, loup de mer, a Wiener Schnitzel.
Q: What’s your favourite cut, and how do you like it cooked?
A: I like it rare, medium rare at the most, not more. I like the ribeye the most, because it has the most flavour to my taste, and especially what I like is the cap of the ribeye. It’s a very small part.
Q: How do you cook the steaks here?
A: We have a wood-burning grill [using Italian oak], which gives a really distinctive flavour. Most steakhouses just have a broiler. It has no real flavour or interest. Plus, we make our own seasoning, a mixture of salt and different kinds of peppers. We grill onions, dry and powder them, add a little herbs and paprika. It has some spice to it but not too hot. We always make sure to let a steak sit for five-10 minutes after it’s cooked, then pop it on the grill for a few seconds so it’s hot.
Q: Are celebrities picky?
A: People think celebrities are picky because they are in movies. Most of them I know, so it’s really easy to cook for someone I know. I know if Anne Hathaway or Ellen Degenres come in, they are vegan and there is a vegan menu. Or if Leonardo DiCaprio comes and says he wants a tasting menu, or David Beckham likes his steak well done. If you have Shaquille O’Neal, he’s have a 24-oz Japanese steak, and he cleans it up like nothing. As long as people love food, I don’t care if they are famous or not famous. Everybody is famous somewhere. If you have a family, your kids think you are the best thing in the world. When I come out of the kitchen and say hello, it’s not because David Beckham or Tom Cruise is there that I will run to them. I do the opposite. I don’t go to their table first, I go to every table, and their table last. If I know them well, I might sit down with them for two minutes. I will say hello to everybody.
Q: Where do you spend most of your time?
A: I live in Los Angeles. About 200 days or so, I spend there. And I go into the kitchen everyday. And soon more so. I am building a new test kitchen called Experiment. I want to get to a point where I know about every ingredient the way I like it the best. Others might say different. But I said I want to figure out how I can get the best flavour out of every dish.
Q: How do you reconcile promoting healthy eating and running a steakhouse?
A: I think it’s ok to do that in moderation. You are not going to eat lobster everyday — and you are not going to eat pizza everyday. If you eat a pizza, it’s just as many calories. Or a hamburger. Eat smaller portions and eat more vegetables. You can do that here, too.
Don’t miss it
Cut is now open at The Address Downtown Dubai; call 04-4238882.
