Rarely do I have a reason to be awake and out of the house at 7 am, let alone be at a casino for an interview. But the opportunity to interview an iconic chef like Wolfgang Puck doesn’t happen as often in Detroit as I would like, so I jumped at the opportunity to inhale my coffee a little earlier than usual.
Wolfgang Puck and Executive Chef Marc Djozlija
Luckily Wolfgang Puck is a huge fan of coffee, so he understood why I greeted him with a cup in hand. After a few minutes of small talk about the Gallery event for the North American International Auto Show his restaurant catered, his cappuccino arrived. That’s when I hit him with my first question. Why put your only restaurant in the Midwest in Detroit. As it turns out, Puck had more reasons to put a restaurant in our city than he initially assumed he possessed.
When he was approached by MGM Grand to put a Wolfgang Puck Grill inside its new Detroit casino several years ago, he knew from his experience with MGM in Las Vegas that MGM is a strong partner. That’s vital because Puck believes going into business with someone is a lot like getting married to them.
“If you get married, and it’s only good for one person, you won’t be married for a long time. For us, it’s the same thing,” said Puck. “At the end, if we are not financially responsible, they won’t be happy either. So we have to have both,. We have to have a good restaurant and we have to be financially responsible.”
Having that strong partnership wasn’t enough, though. He needed an executive chef who was as talented with finances as in the kitchen. Puck didn’t have to search far. When he started talking with Marc Djozlija he found out the native Detroiter wanted to move home.
“A chef like Marc is good because he’s not only a really good cook, he’s also a really good business person. Today, to stay in business you have to be both,” mused Puck.
Luckily for me, I had the chance to judge a cooking competition a few months back that Chef Marc eventually won. He was a blast to talk with and his food is as creative as it is delicious, so to me Puck’s comments were high praise. But those two factors were not quite enough to make the restaurant happen.
Enter Puck’s spouse, fashion designer Gelila Assefa. Her family used to own the venerable Ethiopian restaurant in Detroit called The Blue Nile and she assured him Detroit was a great place for people who love food.
“She said Detroit has very nice restaurants. That it has a lot of ethnic restaurants and it should be a good place for us to be,” said Puck.
So far, Detroit has been a great place for a Wolfgang Puck Grille. He happens to have a few favorites on the local menu … something I was able to suss out by asking tough questions like “if you had one last meal on Earth and you had to eat it here, what would it be?”
This question seemed to throw him for a loop as it took him longer to answer … partly due to the big grin on his face and a chuckle he was trying to suppress. For the record, Puck would start with a glass of champagne and a smoked salmon pizza, move on to a chopped salad or a pumpkin soup in the winter and chomp on a nice rib-eye for his main course. He would finish it off with a chocolate souffle.
Luckily Puck has a good sense of humor, even when he’s only had time for one cappuccino.
