Wolfgang Puck Biography

World renowned celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck was born in 1949 in Carinthia, Austria. Today, Wolfgang Puck is essentially an empire, consisting of restaurants, product brands, and cookbooks, but long before Puck became this phenomenon, he grew up in the Sankt Veit an der Glan area, learning to cook by watching his mother. Wolfgang determined early on that he would pursue a career as a chef, and so in his late teen years he began to train in an apprenticeship at a hotel in Monaco.

From Monaco, Puck went to Paris to work at Maxim’s before moving to the United States in his early twenties. Wolfgang first settled in Indianapolis, but ultimately ended up working as a chef and at the Ma Maison restaurant in Los Angeles, California. Eventually, Wolfgang rose to become part owner of the establishment, but it wasn’t until he began publishing his cookbooks in the early 1980’s that he began to move from chef to celebrity.

With the opening of his Spago restaurant in 1982, Wolfgang Puck became one of the most well-known chefs and restaurateurs in southern California. Within two decades, Puck had established Wolfgang Puck Companies, overseeing nearly one hundred fifty establishments (sixty restaurants, twenty of them fine dining establishments, and nearly one hundred Wolfgang Puck Express operations.) Today, Puck is known for his establishments and his frequent appearances on various cuisine-oriented television shows, including: Hell’s kitchen, MasterChef, The Next Food Network Star, Iron Chef America, and Top Chef. In the early 2000’s, he also had his own Emmy Award-winning television program, Wolfgang Puck.

In addition to managing his Wolfgang Puck empire and appearing on various television shows, Puck has also authored six cookbooks and oversees his own charitable foundation. The Puck-Lazaroff Charitable Foundation was established in the early 1980’s, and seeks to raise funds for Meals on Wheels and help raise needed funds for other philanthropic endeavors.