How is it, my wife asks, that in trendy L.A., Wolfgang Puck (below, left) can sustain the style and
substance of Spago for nearly 10
years, keep it fresh, and not be blindsided by what she likes to call “the
fickleness of the LA-LA dining out market.”?
The L.A. fine-dining crowd is forever rummaging around for
the next hip restaurant where one can see and be seen. Never mind what kind of
food the restaurant serves or even how good the food and service are, if it
looks and feels good and is accorded a seal of approval by hip people, it is,
therefore (no questions asked), hip: the best new place.
It’s not, I tell my wife, that Puck ignores hipness or
doesn’t want to be hip. Better than most he understands conditionally (and
here’s the rub) what it is that the L.A. dining-out market expects and so
creates concepts—the first of them, Spago—that
satisfy, gratify, and surpass expectations. I say, “conditionally,” because, ever since his tour of duty
at Ma Maison in the mid ’70’s when he was owner Patrick Terrail’s chef there,
Puck has maintained at Spago and
subsequent concepts the matchless culinary skills and creativity first in
evidence at Ma Maison.
As he continues to wow Angelinos and the rest of us with his
inventions, he refuses to adulterate either skills or creativity or to
capitulate to the impetuous and petty demands of hip L.A. diners. His
restaurants, beginning with Spago,
are what they are. If the hip market flocks to them because it thinks Puck and
his restaurants are hip, so be it.
One more time: Puck protects the integrity of his brand,
refusing to adulterate it (for a risky, but mostly inconsequential, exception
see below). Therein, I remind my wife, lies his resilience in an industry where
the durability of class acts is envied, but isn’t quite so obvious as the flash
and splash of one-trick chefs.
Everything bearing Puck’s signature works magic; everything
he touches turns to gold. Well, almost everything: everything except his line
of frozen or canned foods which never caught on for reasons not so difficult
to explain: Why would a celebrity chef with more clout than some box-office
idols, who staked a claim to culinary genius based on imaginative dishes
prepared from scratch, jeopardize that reputation by coming out with a line of
prepared foods? For a few extra bucks? That’s not hip.
Puck is a restaurant brand, I tell my wife, as recognizable
among dining-out cognoscenti as McDonalds is among the proletariat. He has
established the brand in one of the roughest and, as already pointed out, picky
restaurant markets of the world, buttressed by intelligent marketing that
reassures customers who buy the brand they will never be disappointed.
Accept no substitutes. Whatever concept Puck conceives—be it
Postrio, Chinois on Main, Eureka, or
his latest, Granita—he executes honestly and brilliantly. No frills attached.
From display kitchens to the marvelously imaginative, Lazaroff-designed interiors to the meticulously massaged menus, the sum
and substance of the results is an ambiance that assaults all of the senses.
Nothing is overlooked.
Whereas many of his competitors overkill with style while
neglecting basics (food, service, décor, and price), Puck fills his places with
restaurant truths; his are the genuine articles.
He may lose customers to the trendy seductions of a
competitor who sends critics into spasms of ecstasy with evocations of—mmm,
tasty!—braised cock’s combs, but the pleasure is short-lived. Granted, real and
fake Angelinos, not unlike bees flitting from flower to flower, still search
for that extraordinarily elusive dining-out sensation that will pollinate their
egos; but, fickleness aside, most have enough sense to graze at places where
everything is in clover.
Regardless of variations on braised cock’s comb, most diners
patronize restaurants—hip or not—where the chef doesn’t play with the food.
Face it, few restaurants offer money-back guarantees: a
customer doesn’t sink that much money into a dining-out occasion to warrant a
restaurant indemnifying the expense. He or she isn’t buying a house or a new
car. Furthermore, menu choices are varied enough that any one or more of them
ought to satisfy the most demanding guest. Nearly all restaurants will comp a
meal if a guest has a legitimate complaint about the food or the service; but,
most people who dine out regularly would prefer to know that the meal they’re
about to enjoy is going to be risk-free rather than a double-your-money-back crap-shoot. It’s kind of
like unwrapping a Hershey bar or drinking a Coke. I call that, “confidence in
the brand.” That, I contend, is what Puck’s restaurants are all about. There
exists an unwritten guarantee that time spent in one of his places will be darn
near perfect.
A customer walks into Granita in Malibu. It is her first
visit. She’s heard of other restaurants in the area—all are pretty darn good (at least that’s what she’s been told), all have been around longer than Granita—yet she’s confident she’s
made the right choice. Whatever anxiety she feels that may offset the
anticipation of the meal is diminished considerably by her knowledge that
Granita is one of Puck’s brands.
Afterthoughts: Patrick Terrail Finds Wolfgang Puck in Los Angeles...click here to read more>>
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