Once again, the indefatigable Wolfgang Puck is back. For the 29th year, he’s hosting the official afterparty for Hollywood’s biggest night, with his team cooking the feast for the Academy Awards Governors Ball.
The chef-restaurateur is leading a brigade of 120 chefs who will serve 1,500 Hollywood stars and power players. For the night they’ll cook through 65 pounds of Miyazaki Wagyu, 2,000 eggs, 100 pounds of confit duck, 220 pounds of potatoes, 500 pounds of chicken, 400 pounds of smoked salmon, and more.
Along with the head of WP Catering Eric Klein, Puck will be joined by Cut London’s executive chef Elliott Grover who’s going to bring an English accent to the proceedings. Special to this year will be a classic beef Wellington as well as fish and chips, and an English trifle for dessert.
The menu will also include smoked salmon on matzah shaped like Oscar statuettes, Wagyu sliders, spicy tuna tartare in miso sesame cones, cacio e pepe macaroni and cheese, English pea agnolotti, and cod bouillabaisse. Of course, the chicken pot pie is back again as “Guests would revolt!” if he took it off the menu, Puck says.
The food will be accompanied by Fleur de Miraval, Brad Pitt’s Rosé Champagne which is the official bubbly of the party for the second year running.
Puck has been throwing an Oscars party for decades, but not always the official one. For years Irving “Swifty” Lazar hosted the city’s hottest Academy Awards soiree at Puck’s Spago. “Forget about the Governors Ball, no big star went to that at the time,” Puck told Robb Report. “Swifty’s was the really big party to go to.” When Lazar passed, the Academy approached the celeb chef to help make its fête the one A-listers actually wanted to attend. He agreed, so long as he had autonomy. He told organizers that, “As long as you let me cook what I want to cook, I’ll do it. I don’t tell you how to make movies, you don’t tell me how to cook.”
When officials tried to meddle that first year, he had none of it. “I still remember my chef calling me saying the organizers were telling them to give them chicken and fish and that we had to do this and do that,” Puck says. “I said to my chef, ‘Tell them to stay out of the kitchen.’” The officials stood down and Puck’s menu was a hit. He’s been back ever since.
Puck hopes to keep doing this party for years to come—at the very least until the 100th Academy Awards in 2028. That desire to keep going should come as no surprise to anyone who has popped into Cut or Spago in Beverly Hills on a random weeknight only to see the chef still bobbing around the dining room and kitchen; long past time when celeb chefs of his stature are still fixtures in their restaurants.
As for the Academy Awards ceremony itself, he rarely watches it—he’s usually too consumed with making sure the party is ready to go when the Oscars end. However, Puck does have a Best Picture favorite, another star of the ‘80s that just doesn’t quit: “I’m rooting for Top Gun!”
