How Wolfgang Puck became Hollywood’s chef to the stars – the secrets to his success

Whipping boy: I grew up poor in the Austrian countryside in a community of just two farmers and two or three houses. We had meat once a week, on Sundays for lunch. We had a vegetable garden and ate a lot of potatoes and cabbage. We had milk and made our own cheese. In the summer, my mother worked as a chef in a little resort hotel on a lake and I stayed with her. When it was raining, I would help her or the pastry chef.

I loved making Salzburger Nockerl (three or four mountainous peaks of vanilla soufflé, dusted with sugar and served on jam) and other pastries. By the time I was 12 years old, I knew how to whip the egg whites the right way. I wanted to become an architect, but I would have had to move to Vienna and it’s expensive to live there. My parents didn’t have any money and I like pastries, so I thought maybe I would just cook.

Turning point: At home, I had a stepfather who was really crazy, always drunk, and he would beat me if I didn’t bring home the right reports from school. My mother or grandmother would scream, “What are you doing? The poor kid.” He always told me I was good for nothing.

When I was 14, my mother’s boss found me a job as a chef’s apprentice in a town called Villach, 50 miles away, so I moved there. It was a long way because we didn’t have a car. When I started, the chef was just as crazy as my step­father. After about six weeks, we ran out of potatoes and the chef blamed me. He called me over and said, “You’re good for nothing, you better go back home to your mother.”

I thought I would much rather jump into the river and kill myself. So I stood on a bridge over the river and I thought, “Should I jump in? What will happen? Are you going to heaven or to hell?” After thinking for about an hour, I decided to go back tomorrow and see what happens.