“When people sit down, we offer them little salads... and then warm dishes, like 12 different main courses - from baked potatoes and caviar to tortellini with truffles and lamb and lobster,” Puck said. “You name it, we have it.”Puck moved to the United States at the age of 24, opening such legendary eateries over the years as Ma Maison and Spago on Sunset Boulevard, before that upscale resaturant moved to Beverly Hills.
The master chef now reigns over a culinary empire including upscale restaurants in Detroit, Las Vegas and Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States, as well as numerous establishments in other countries.
Puck also provides sustenance for millions more via a thriving cottage industry of cookbooks, catering enterprises and ready-to-eat meals sold in US supermarkets.
Nowhere is the art of feeding masses of people well, quite the challenge that it is at the Oscars. But after a score years of catering one of the world's swankest after parties, Puck says he doesn't allow himself to get unnerved by the task. “I don't get nervous at all,” he said.
“The only time I get nervous is half an hour before, because I don't want to start too early and hopefully that everything works fine.”Like many chefs, Puck enjoys innovating in the kitchen, some members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, who come to the Oscars ceremony regularly, actually want the same dishes year after year, prepared by Puck's exacting hand.
“We have to make our chicken pot and the Oscar salmons and the golden chocolate Oscar - that's a tradition,” he said. And once the glitterati are fed and the meal is over, Puck said, “the whole world is going to be happy.”