♪ haslinda: hello and welcome to "high flyers," the show that gives you a 360 degree view of asia's business elite. today, we are joined today by one of the world's leading chefs. after learning his trade at top restaurants in europe, he moved to the u.s., where he has gained the respect and attention of the hollywood elite, so much so that he hosted the oscars dinner more than 20 times. let's meet wolfgang puck.

luxury steakhouses, high-end asian dishes, and homemade pizza. all that can be found in the wolfgang puck empire. he has more than 100 restaurants around the world. his culinary skills go beyond the kitchen to include tv shows, recipe books, and an online cooking school. wolfgang: i'm sure you will enjoy it. haslinda: it's time this high flyer to join us and give us his menu for success. ♪ haslinda: chef wolfgang puck, welcome to "high flyers." it's such a pleasure to have you on board. wolfgang: i am so happy to be here. i am just going to look at you. that is right. haslinda: you are such a celebrated chef, but it started when you were very young.

your mom, maria, had a great part to play. wolfgang: absolutely. i grew up in austria in a small village. i think we had more cows than people in the village. my mother was a professional chef in the summertime in a resort. i used to visit her when school was out, and i started to cook with a pastry chef -- mainly because i loved sweets -- i still do, but it really started with my mother. and she was the most patient person and the nicest person. and a very good cook. she could make out of something very inexpensive, really simple, taste really delicious. haslinda: what was your first dish you cooked with your mom? wolfgang: the first dish was saturday mornings, we always made a cake. i used to love mixing the butter with the sugar and eggs, and eat half of it while we were mixing it. that i always remember. we used to make wiener schnitzel, that is a veal cutlet. we made it in half oil and half pork fat. the smell of it, i used to love

it. i go back and just think about it. when i was a kid, i ate half of it. i said i am going to save the rest for tonight or for tomorrow. haslinda: but it wasn't always plain sailing. when you wanted to be a chef, your dad was dead against it. wolfgang: my dad was totally crazy. i should have fired him a long time ago. he said cooking was not a profession for men. it is a profession for women. you should be a mechanic or a mason or a carpenter or anything like that. and then he always told me i am good for nothing. so when i left my little house and went to the train station, he said, "you are good for nothing. you will be back in a month. you're not going to make it as a cook." haslinda: it is true, isn't it, that you dabbled in construction? you did try. wolfgang: i hated it. he was building this house and i had to help them bring the bricks and do this and that.

all of my friends were playing soccer. i used to hear them play, and i had to work. i did not like that. haslinda: it almost never happened because when you were doing your apprenticeship in the kitchen, at about 14, you suddenly ran out of potatoes. that almost cost you your job. and your life. wolfgang: and my life. it was a really crazy thing. after one month, i told my father i would never come back. i would kill myself before i came back home. after one month, we ran out of potatoes during lunchtime on sunday. that was the big meal. the chef called me over and said, "you are good for nothing. you have to go back home to your mother." i said, i cannot go home. he just fired me. that day, at night, i went on the river, there was a big bridge. i said, "i'm going to jump in the river."

haslinda: what went through your mind? wolfgang i am not going home. : he doesn't want me. i certainly don't want to go home. what else am i going to do? i am going to kill myself and jump in the river. after standing for an hour, i said, "you know, maybe the chef was drunk. maybe he didn't mean it. i am going to go back to next day." i went home and went to sleep. i didn't sleep all night. the second apprentice saw me coming in. he said, "i thought you got fired." i said, "i cannot go home." he said, "good you are here. i will hide you in the vegetable cellar and you can peel potatoes." haslinda: back to potatoes. wolfgang: back to potato peeling without cooking them. two weeks later, the chef came down, and i was sitting down there peeling potatoes. he said, "what are you doing here?" and i said, "i cannot go home. i will jump in the river before going home." so he called the owner of the hotel, the owner came down and the chef said, "i don't know what to do with this little guy. i fired him. he doesn't want to leave," and so on. the owner was a little nicer.

he actually said, "we have another hotel." and then he sent me to the other hotel. over there was a lady chef. she had kids my age. she was nicer to me, looked that i ate breakfast in the morning and that i did my work and did not say anything. then i started to move up a little bit. haslinda: your 100-mile journey is quite something. you went from austria to paris. wolfgang: and then to america. haslinda: and then to the u.s. wolfgang: yeah. haslinda: when was the turning point? wolfgang: when i was 17, i left austria for france. i worked in a restaurant in burgundy, and i found out there is one, two, and three-star restaurants. naturally i looked and said, "this restaurant i workein ly had one star." i said, "i cannot go to austria before working in the three-star restaurant." so i started to write all these fancy, three-star restaurants, and then the first one who accepted me and said, "okay, you

can start working in april, or something." so i went there. that was really an epiphany for me. it was something totally different. the owner was 72 years old, but he had such passion in the kitchen. raymond thuilier. he was amazing. he owned the three-star restaurant. he was the chef. everything has to be the best quality. and he had such intensity and passion. haslinda: you were at a restaurant called la maison. that was the time when you learned to be a businessman. your paycheck had bounced. in return, you asked for part of the business. wolfgang: exactly. when i started, i worked in indianapolis, and then i moved to los angeles. i worked in the restaurant called la maison. and because they had one fancy investor named gene kelly, you know, the actor, i said, "ok, i will work there." i did not know they were

financially insolvent. so what happened was, when i got my first paycheck, the bank was two blocks away. i walked to the bank, gave them my paycheck to cash, the bank said, "there is no money." i said, "what do you mean there is no money?" he said, "yeah, there is no money in the account." i went back and i said, "what happened? there is no money." he said, "we are going to deposit tomorrow." he gave me some cash and some more cash the next day. he said, "maybe i will pay you a little less and i give you part of the restaurant." i became his partner and i stayed there for six years. i took a restaurant that made $18,000 a month -- when i left six years later in 1981, we grossed $350,000 a month. haslinda: you left to set up your own restaurant? wolfgang: exactly. that's when i said, "i want to be my own boss." before leaving there, i said, "i found this new restaurant. but we have to form a management company, and we own it together 50-50."

he said, "no way. i always got to own 51%." i said, "well, me too." so we had to split up. we got a very nasty divorce basically, and then i opened spago. and two years later, after his restaurant closed, and spago became the big success, you know, i wanted it to be a little neighborhood restaurant. all of a sudden, all the people came. there were oscar parties. we had all the people coming, elizabeth taylor, gregory peck and jimmy stewart, paul newman, all these people came to the restaurant. and some of them were very young like sean penn and madonna, michael jackson, so we had this whole mixture of people. haslinda: of course the smoked salmon caviar pizza was a draw. what people may not know is that back then, when you came up with the idea, it wasn't on the menu. you had to send the pizza to them. wolfgang: well, spago, first of all, was a lot of firsts.

we had an open kitchen. i built it that way. that way i can see the customers and manage the restaurant at the same time. and then one day, when i served smoked salmon, normally we used brioche, and then it came into my head, i will just cook the bread, the pizza dough, maybe some onions, because smoked salmon and onions go well together. and i will put some dill cream, some fresh dill, and shallots on top. hot and cold goes well together. the soft and crispy goes well together. and then i tasted it and said, wow, a glass of champagne with that would be perfect. so i ordered the glass of champagne and everybody tasted it. and then i used to send it to all the people that i know. the never saw anything like that. haslinda: next on "high flyers" -- wolfgang: we never hear about them. ♪

♪ haslinda: so, chef, whenever you do a google on wolfgang puck, the first thing that comes up is celebrity chef. yet the term celebrity chef is not what you want to be referred to. wolfgang: absolutely not. i want to be known as a chef. i work in my restaurants. we have a lot of famous people come to our restaurants. but i think i am in the service business. i like to make customers happy. "celebrity chef" -- i don't know what it means. [laughter]

haslinda: it is the celebrity chef who has helped to glamorize the cooking world. wolfgang: it is not the celebrity chefs. it is television mainly that has glamorized cooking. because there are so many shows about cooking all over the world. it is crazy. when i look back 30 years ago when i founded spago, there was no cooking shows. i remember when the food network in america started, they had a little office and two hot plates. that's where you cooked, but it was not much cooking. every channel everywhere you have cooking shows. haslinda: you are competing with the big names in the industry, the likes of gordon ramsay. what does it take to be on top, to stay on top? you are one of the most celebrated chefs, if not the most celebrated chef in the u.s. wolfgang: who is gordon ramsay? [laughter] wolfgang: we have never heard about him. i think it's really nice. we compete against everybody.

we can compete against the supermarkets. we compete against a lot of things, a lot of restaurants, obviously, but it is up to us to get a good reputation and get the best word-of-mouth. haslinda: it's easy to have control over your restaurants if you have one, two, or even three restaurants, but you have almost 100 restaurants. how much of wolfgang puck is in each and every one of them? wolfgang: well, we really have our own talent pool. so we don't open a restaurant and then i have to go to gordon ramsay and ask him for a chef. no. we have our homegrown chefs and managers. so that's what makes the big difference, because they know our culture. and not to say that the other people don't have great restaurants, but every culture is a little bit different. what makes us successful might not be exactly the same dna that makes somebody else successful. so we could open 10 restaurants

a year. you know, we have so many people who want us to be all over the place. but i decided, you know what, we only open restaurants if i know the chef or the pastry chef and the manager. haslinda: you have served about seven u.s. presidents, and you have hosted the oscars dinner more than 20 times. wolfgang: yeah. haslinda: is the latest one any different than the one you did before? wolfgang: the oscars are always very exciting. it is probably the biggest party in america, in hollywood for sure. so everybody comes there. the fashion world is there. obviously the music world is there. everybody celebrates the oscars. everybody celebrates the movies. so for us to do a big oscar dinner every year, it is just as exciting as the first time we did it. the only difference is now i know what to expect. so the first time, i was not sure, but now we know what to expect, so we are prepared for everything. haslinda: is it as exciting as

it was before, serving the chocolate oscar statuettes to the celebrities? wolfgang: we have a little bit of home-cooked comfort food. but also innovation, so we make a good mixture. we have people like barbra streisand who comes and she always wants our chicken pot pie with truffles. we make it every year. totally. we do it now for so many years, i know most of the customers really well. it's really easy. haslinda: leonardo dicaprio was nominated. did you have in mind if he were to win the oscars and you would serve him a separate dish? wolfgang: i think about it but i don't really do it. i don't know if they are going to win. i thought he was going to win, but it's an interesting thing. i made a giant king crab from alaska, so we gave him a giant king crab, but i cut it up in small pieces. i served it with an asian,

almost singapore flavor. haslinda: do you have to cater to all the whims and fancies? how prepared are you to do that? wolfgang: you know we are going to have some vegetarians and vegans. we have eight chefs who only do special requests. we are ready for everything. if you want singapore noodles, we will make them for you. if somebody says, i want a plain pasta. we are ready. martin scorsese had dinner and then he said, "i'm still a little bit hungry. can you make me a little pasta?" i was sitting with him and john travolta, and i told the chef make us a little tomato basil garlic pasta. make it a little spicy. we ate pasta at 1:00 in the morning. he said, "oh, my god. this is perfect." haslinda: there is one person you would like to cook for. that would be the pope. why? wolfgang: i was born catholic. even though i am not a practitioner. i cooked for everybody from the queen of england to all of the movie people to all the

presidents. i thought i never cooked for the pope, so that would be a challenge. haslinda: pope, if you were watching. what would the dish be? wolfgang: i think the pope is a very simple person. i would not make up something with truffles and caviar. i would make them maybe something my mother or grandmother made for me when i was a child. like we have an austrian style ravioli. i know he is from argentina, they like pasta, we make it with potatoes and cheese and a little mint. and then just serve it with parmesan and butter. i think he would like that. haslinda: coming up -- wolfgang: i said, "johnny, what you going to do with the pizza?" "i'm going to put them in the freezer." "i'm not going to give them to you anymore if you treat them like that." ♪

♪ haslinda: chef wolfgang puck, you have six cookbooks to your name. but the latest one is slightly different. it comes with not just recipes, but exercise tips. what is that about? wolfgang: i did the cook book because i really think cooking is only part of our life. you know, it's important to cook

healthy food, good food, good ingredients. not to use all of the store-bought stuff that is full of salt and sugar and preservatives. so i said, i want people to eat really good food, and people to exercise, because when i started to exercise, i started to feel so much better. so it's not about being skinny, skinny, but about being in shape. haslinda: so fair to say it reflects your fitness journey as well? wolfgang: exactly. because i have two young children. i have to play tennis with them. i want to go skiing with them. i want to stay in shape at least until i'm 85 or 90. haslinda: speaking of your sons, one of them would not get out of bed until you say i am going to cook eggs. wolfgang: i have two sons who are really into cooking. byron right now is at cornell, at the hotel and restaurant school there, and then i have oliver, who is only 10 years old. he loves to cook. if he doesn't want to get up, he loves scrambled eggs with toast and a little marmalade.

if he doesn't want to get up in the morning, i tell i tell him if you don't want to come down into the kitchen, i will cook the eggs myself without you. he jumps out of bed and says, "no, no, papa, wait for me. i am coming." so i put the eggs down, he cracks the eggs and beats them. then he cooks them slowly and makes scrambled eggs. and for him, it is amazing. he doesn't like school lunch. so i have to make a panini for him, but he always cooks it. i put the sausage or meat or cheese or whatever it is, and then he puts it on the panini grill and tells all the students i cooked my own sandwich. haslinda: you have said that you are a businessman and you are on the verge of launching your online cooking school. why? why do you think that will work out? that there will be demand? wolfgang: we don't know. we never know if it will work out. that's why it's exciting to do it. i really founded the online cooking school because you see the young people today, they do everything online.

they learn online. they play online. they have games online. so everything is online. so i thought to myself, why not start a cook book online where i do every recipe from a-z? let me show you how to make the perfect fried egg. i'm going to show you how to do it the easy way. what is great is you can see me in the kitchen the way you want to see me. you can slow it down or speed it up. i show you how to do each recipe. it's much easier to understand than reading it in the book. because you can see it. you get the recipe also, so you can print out your shopping list. but mainly i did it myself, every recipe. and then in the springtime, i am going to add some barbecue recipes. so i don't have to write another good book. -- cookbook. i just add that already. so in a few years, we are going to have this amazing library of recipes. i know people will go to the

website and they can cook just like me. haslinda: innovation is something that you really believe in. why? why is it important to have innovative cooking? have a test kitchen? wolfgang: when i started spago, and i looked what is out there, i said, you know what? i am going to be like armani. i did dinner for a fashion show. i said he not only has upscale haute couture clothing, but he has perfumes, licensing, he has all of these different things. it's a complex business. i said, you know, maybe i can base my restaurant concept on that, too. we started with upscale restaurants. then we also started to have middle of the road restaurants and not too expensive restaurants, but still very good. restaurants in the airport. then i started to make frozen pizza and soup in the supermarket. also we have appliances and cookware that we sell on hsn and in different stores around the

country. haslinda: let's talk about the frozen pizza. you have someone to credit for that idea. johnny carson was a regular at your restaurant. he used to buy what, 10, 20 boxes of pizza? you wondered what he was doing with them. wolfgang: johnny used to come to our restaurant all the time. he was with his new girlfriend alex at the time. he took home 10 pizzas on friday night, and i said, "what you doing with the pizzas? are you having another party?" he said, "i put them in the freezer." "you put them in the freezer? what? i am not going to give you pizzas anymore if you treat them like that." he said, "no, no, they are just as good as the ones you make here." i said, "that can't be possible." so i tried them. i said, "it's a little dry." the next one i cooked less and less. i spot cooked them a little bit. then i baked them in home and said, "maybe he's right."

so then when a supermarket called gelson's came to me. i know bernie gelson very well. he said, "you know, maybe you should sell some of your stuff in restaurants in the store." i said, "let's start with the pizzas." haslinda: you are ok with putting your name on a lot of different things. not just frozen pizza but also appliances, utensils. some people may think that is selling out. is it? wolfgang: you know, i really want to help people be better at home in cooking. you know, i don't sell sheets for the bedroom or things for , the bathroom. i sell everything possible you could use in the kitchen. if you have a better blender or if you have expensive pots and pans, which help you to be a better cook, i don't think it's selling out. i am really here to empower people to be better cooks at home. haslinda: chef wolfgang puck, you are pushing 66, 67 perhaps. wolfgang: only. haslinda: only. you work six days a week and you

travel at least 100 days a year. that is some aggressive -- yes. are you planning to slow down? wolfgang: i am not planning to slow down. you know, like i love to come here to singapore. we just opened a spago here, the marina bay sands. we always have new projects. as long as i enjoy it, and as long as i have passion doing things i love to do, why stop? haslinda: what do you think your legacy will be? wolfgang: if one day i get a tombstone, and somebody writes on it "he was a good father and husband," that would be it. haslinda: chef wolfgang puck, thank you so much for being on "high flyers." it has been such a pleasure. thank you. wolfgang: it's good to be here. good to be here on "high flyers." i did not even get height sick. [laughter] ♪

♪ >> welcome to this program. changes undergoing many . the first is a rapidly declining population. countryies looks had a can go forward and sustain economic growth. these solutions conserve as examples for other advanced countries around the world that face the same social changes. describes episode