Wolfgang Puck's Favorite Celebratory Meal Might Be Yours, Too

Wolfgang Puck has been a famous and respected star chef for decades, long known for feeding the glitterati at his L.A. restaurant, Spago, and catering the post-Oscars Governor's Ball, where the stars go after the awards show. Puck has likely had more celebratory meals than he can count, but his favorite meal for a festive occasion is pizza, albeit an elevated take on the beloved food that many people eat on Friday night.

Sharing his choice with Yahoo! Life, Puck said, "A smoked salmon pizza with caviar and a glass of champagne? There's nothing better than that." It shouldn't be a surprise, since the pizza is Puck's signature dish, created by him at Spago after it opened in 1982 and still on its menu today. It's made by brushing homemade pizza dough with olive oil and scattering sliced red onions on top, then quickly cooking it in a hot pizza oven until it's browned. A blend of crème fraîche (which is different from sour cream) mixed with dill, shallots, sea salt, pepper, and lemon juice is spread on the cooked pizza, which is then topped with smoked salmon, caviar dollops, and chopped chives.

Puck came up with the pizza when legendary actress Joan Collins ordered smoked salmon with brioche, and he didn't have any of the bread left. He was supposedly inspired by the flavors of a bagel with cream cheese.

Wolfgang Puck's salmon and caviar pizza was revolutionary at the time and helped set off the 1980s gourmet pizza trend that created California pizza, now accepted as one of the different types of U.S. pizza. Puck tried classic American pizzas, including slices in New York's Little Italy and deep dish pizza in Chicago, but thought they were awful. So, the Austrian native intentionally set out to do something different. Explaining why most versions of the dish failed to impress him, he told Yahoo! Life, "I love the pursuit of pizza. I like things with great ingredients, [but] I don't like pizza with tomato sauce."

The new California style ignored traditional toppings like pepperoni, sausage, and mushrooms, and even tomato sauce and mozzarella, in favor of novel sauces and spreads and unique, often gourmet ingredients. Puck hired inventive pizzamaker Ed LaDou when he opened Spago, and together they devised more than 250 gourmet pizzas in three years, including duck breast and hoisin sauce; pate, ricotta, and mustard; and barbecue chicken, which was also one of the most celebrated. It's similar to the barbecue chicken pizza that's been the top seller at California Pizza Kitchen since it opened, likely because LaDou created the chain's original menu. In fact, the inspiration for California Pizza Kitchen was letting the public experience the kind of original pizzas being made by Spago.