Wolfgang Puck didn't think his son would follow in his footsteps. Now he's preparing the succession.

After delivering the closing speech at his bar mitzvah, marking the spiritual journey from boy to man, Byron Lazaroff-Puck turned to America's most famous celebrity chef with a promise.

"Don't worry," the 13-year-old told his father, Wolfgang Puck. "In a few years, you'll be sipping mai tais in Malibu, and I'll take over."

"It was just a joke," Lazaroff-Puck, now 31, tells me. "But the very next day, he came up to me and said, 'If you really want to understand this industry, you have to come work.'"

That's how he ended up in the kitchen at Spago, the Los Angeles restaurant that birthed his father's multimillion-dollar empire, when summer break rolled around seven months later.

Job title: dishwasher.

Eighteen years later, Puck doesn't have time to sip many mai tais — he has 25 fine-dining restaurants and over 1,000 employees to oversee. Still, the 76-year-old isn't doing it alone. Lazaroff-Puck has worked his way up from that three-compartment stainless steel sink to an office he shares with his father.

Job title: President of the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group.

When the pair took me behind the scenes of Spago's Beverly Hills kitchen, I wanted to learn how the 44-year-old restaurant has endured in a city chasing everlasting youth. The staff that has stuck around for decades, a sixth sense for anticipating guests' needs, and an embrace of fresh ideas and technology are all ingredients in its recipe for success.

The secret sauce, though, is Puck and his son. And making it together has been healing for both of them.

"Children have this unbelievable sense of wonderment about the world, where everything is new and fun and interesting," Lazaroff-Puck said. "When I work alongside my dad, that's what the world feels like."

A star is born

Puck has often said that his restaurants are like his children, which would make Spago, now grossing $15 million annually, Lazaroff-Puck's eldest brother.

"I didn't get to have the most interpersonal relationship with my dad growing up because he was, you know, building a multinational globe-trotting company," Lazaroff-Puck said.

There weren't many family nights at home, watching movies or swapping stories at the kitchen table. Dinners together always happened at one of the restaurants run by Puck and his then-wife, Barbara Lazaroff.

"Some days I was like, 'I don't want to go to Spago. I have to put on a collared shirt, and I don't want to dress up,''' he added. "But I always went because I knew I'd get to spend time with my mom and dad. It really feels like my home more than anything."

When I inquire if Lazaroff-Puck was ever envious of friends who ate dinner with their families at home, he quickly answers no.

"Family always felt kind of small to a degree, but when I was at Spago, my family felt big," he said. He credits staff — including busser Jorge Ariana, who showed him magic tricks when his parents had to work the room — with making him feel like he belonged. It also didn't hurt that dinner was always delicious.

"I grew up on potatoes; Byron grew up on smoked salmon pizza," Puck said.

Far away from Beverly Hills, Puck grew up in a tiny Austrian village that lacked running water or a toilet. Cooking alongside his mother — making Wiener schnitzel together every Sunday — was the only place Puck felt safe from his abusive stepfather, a coal miner who believed "real men" stayed out of the kitchen.

When a 14-year-old Puck found a job peeling potatoes at a hotel 50 miles away, cooking offered his escape.

"I respect immensely what my father has been able to make out of coming from a town of only 100 people, in an abusive home, to where he is now," Lazaroff-Puck said. "It is one of the true examples of realizing the American dream."

When Puck came to the US in the 1970s, spending a year in Indianapolis before California called his name, canned vegetables and frozen dinners reigned supreme. A friend helped him land a job at Ma Maison. Two weeks later, Puck was promoted to head chef as the restaurant tried to recover from a scathing review. His farm-to-table cooking was a breath of fresh air, revitalizing the Hollywood power-lunch spot and winning him a legion of famous fans. They followed him to Spago, which Puck and Lazaroff opened in January 1982.

With its fresh ingredients and open-air kitchen —the first of its kind in a fine-dining restaurant —Spago had become the "newest celebrity in town." The wait for a table was hours long, and the restaurant's parking lot was packed with Rolls-Royces and paparazzi, who set up camp every night to snap pictures of everyone from Dolly Parton to Barbra Streisand.

"Wolfgang used to drive himself down to Chino Farms in San Diego and bring all the food back because he wanted to get the best of the best," said Spago's executive chef Ari Rosenson, who has been working for Puck since he was 16 years old. "Highlighting the ingredient, and not the chef's ego, really pervades his cuisine."

By the mid-90s, Puck was a father to two children and seven fine-dining restaurants — plus a growing number of casual eateries, a monthly stint on "Good Morning America," and a multimillion-dollar frozen food business. He had become the most "financially successful chef in history," as The New Yorker declared in 1997, writing a playbook that the likes of Guy Fieri and Gordon Ramsay would follow.

Painting on plates

Success aside, Puck didn't believe his sons would follow his footsteps into such an exhausting business, nor did he try to influence them.

"My dad knows all too well that unless you're really passionate about this industry, it's just not an easy one," Lazaroff-Puck said. "I don't think he ever wanted to push me into something that I didn't really want to do. It was only when I finally said, 'I got you,' that his mind flipped."

By then, Lazaroff-Puck had abandoned his childhood dreams of becoming a painter. He realized he was terrible (his word) when his masterpieces never ended up on the family refrigerator. As he worked his way up Spago's kitchen, the teen realized he just needed a different medium.

"Hugo, our kitchen manager at the time, pulled me off the line and taught me the beet napoleon salad," Lazaroff-Puck said, recalling one of his father's classic dishes. "It's salted roasted beets, stacked with layers of goat cheese in between, with a balsamic vinaigrette and microbasil to garnish. It's cut into these beautiful little triangular pyramids, and it's just gorgeous, an eat with your eyes kind of dish."

"That was the moment it all clicked for me," he added. "I realized I don't have to paint on canvases; I can paint on plates."

Spago's kitchen was only the beginning of Lazaroff-Puck's culinary education. After earning a degree from the Nolan School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, the fledgling chef worked at three-star Michelin restaurants, including Alinea, Le Bernardin, and L'Oustau de Baumanière, where his father had discovered his true passion for cooking 60 years prior.

Lazaroff-Puck also returned to Spago to test new recipes in the restaurant's research and development kitchen, which initiated a "totally different relationship" with his father.

"He'd come in every day and ask what we were working on because our goal was to cook something that no one had seen before," Lazaroff-Puck said. "It was the first time I ever got to be like, 'Look at what I'm doing.' And then he'd jump in and start asking me questions about it like, 'Have you thought about doing it this way?' or 'Oh my God, this reminds me of this restaurant I ate at or worked at.'"

Lazaroff-Puck is rarely missing from Puck's side nowadays, whether they're whipping up Okinawa sweet potato pie or racing to the LA fish market at 5 a.m. to beat Nobu Matsuhisa — yes, that Nobu — for the best supplies.

"The early bird gets the worm," Puck once playfully wrote on top of an empty styrofoam box when Matsuhisa was five minutes too late to claim a beautiful bluefin tuna.

It's a mantra that Lazaroff-Puck lives by, making a point of arriving 30 minutes earlier and leaving 30 minutes later than his father, no matter what they're doing or where they are.

"That man has earned the opportunity to take more time and find enjoyment in other aspects of life," Lazaroff-Puck said. "He might not think of it this way, but I do think it's — in part — my job to give him more of those opportunities."

Lazaroff-Puck oversees the marketing, recruiting, retention, and finances of all 25 fine-dining restaurants as president of the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group. He's gone from painting plates to "painting strategy and vision," aiming to double the company's size over the next 10 years.

"I have a job to maintain a legacy that, frankly, had nothing to do with me at the time," Lazaroff-Puck said. "My dad built something exceptional. My drive is to make sure that it's known to the world."

The next generation

Maintaining relevance after 44 years in Los Angeles is a Herculean task. Many of the Hollywood legends who held court in Spago's dining room — like Johnny Carson, who inspired Puck's now-defunct frozen-pizza venture in the late 1980s and 1990s — have long passed. The A-listers who visit today aren't always familiar with the man behind the name.

"One time, Justin Bieber came in, and I went over and said hello," Puck recalled. "And as I was walking back, Justin Bieber asked the guy next to him, 'Who was that?' And the guy said, 'Are you fucking stupid? That's Wolfgang Puck!'"

As his first restaurant inched closer to middle age, Puck knew he needed to do something different, something that evoked nostalgia while keeping things fresh — the high-wire act of any good chef.

"When you are really successful, you cannot say, 'OK, now I got it.' This is the time when you have to say, 'OK, now we innovate,'" Puck said. "If we don't, look at most of the restaurants that were here 20 to 30 years ago, they're all gone."

That's how Spago's innovation menu was born in 2024. On one side is the restaurant's "greatest hits" — like Austrian Wiener schnitzel, Agnolotti del Plin, and the signature smoked salmon pizza — on the other is a $270 tasting menu with seven to nine courses, which rotate weekly depending on what's in season. It's now the highest-selling item at Spago.

"It's really nice when I have someone who's been coming to Spago for 40 years say, 'That's really interesting. I want to try it next time,'" Lazaroff-Puck said. "Then they come back, and I'm like, 'You ready for it?'"

Embracing new culinary techniques came easily to Puck. Embracing new technology? Not so much. When Lazaroff-Puck pitched a strategy to bring Spago into the digital age, partnering with the booking platform SevenRooms to optimize the restaurant's old-school reservation system, his father, who doesn't even use a computer, immediately said no.

"It was an idea that we disagreed on for a long time," Lazaroff-Puck said. "He just didn't really believe in it."

At the peak of its popularity, Spago had seven phone lines for reservations, taken by hand by maître d's who studied The Hollywood Reporter. In her book "Comfort Me With Apples," the legendary food writer Ruth Reichl recalled once walking into Puck's office while he had David Bowie, Charles Heston, and the White House simultaneously on hold.

Puck has always believed that connecting with guests is one of the most important parts of the dining experience. He still greets every table when he's visiting one of his restaurants, and always makes a point to visit the celebrities last — no matter how famous.

"You might come from Iowa and made the reservation two months ago for your husband's birthday," Puck said. "If I said hello to the people around you because they're well-known and didn't go to your table, you wouldn't feel good, even if the food is good."

Still, after much cajoling, Lazaroff-Puck convinced his father to watch the online reservation system — which tracks and streamlines reservations, reviews, and marketing —in action. Everything finally clicked one night when Puck spotted a waiter bringing gluten-free bread to greet a first-time diner with a severe gluten allergy.

"They immediately knew the server and the kitchen would take great care of them," Lazaroff-Puck said of the guests. "That's what it's all about, understanding the guests' needs before they even have to speak it."

The phone line is still there for diners who'd prefer to make a reservation with Spago's longtime maître d' Maria de la Vega, but Lazaroff-Puck is always looking to use technology to improve the company, especially now that he has his father's blessing.

"How we make people feel is important," Puck said. "That, for me, is really the most important thing, and I'm grateful that Byron is with me."

Running the family business

For his own legacy, which has only begun to take shape, Lazaroff-Puck said he hopes to open more doors for younger chefs — showing them the ropes like the Spago staff did for him.

"If I can give more people the opportunity to find a life in this industry, to find passion for this industry, and to be able to support themselves and their families through this industry, that would be a job well done," he added.

It's a tall order for a world that can be all-consuming. Lazaroff-Puck's mother, who split with Puck in 2002, knows all too well. Hours after they exchanged "I dos" at their West Hollywood home in 1983, the newlyweds went back to work at Spago.

"This business is really demanding, and it's hard on your personal life," Lazaroff said.

"So what do I wish for both my sons? I wish for them to have happy lives. I wish for them to do whatever they want to do, but I wish for them to have some balance," she added.

While Lazaroff-Puck admits he's "working now more than ever," he tries never to miss important milestones like birthdays and weddings, which has earned him his father's praise.

"I've had conversations with him before where he said, 'You know, I've missed a lot of weddings because I felt like I couldn't leave the restaurant, so I really respect that you make the effort to go and do those things,'" Lazaroff-Puck said.

Reflection gets better with age, like a sharp cheddar or a bottle of Cabernet, but Puck, who remarried in 2007, will be the first to tell you that he doesn't dwell on the past.

"My life is about now and the future," he tells me. "I don't look back on what happened. What I really like is doing things, improving things, and getting better."

There have been more frequent trips to Puck's homeland, which has also allowed his son to bond with the aunt and cousins who still live in Austria.

Back home in LA, Lazaroff-Puck and his father are often in their shared office together, brainstorming new business ideas or dreaming up plans for a three-star Michelin restaurant, the last thing on Puck's bucket list.

"I never thought that I'd be able to sit toe-to-toe with my father and have him listen as intently to me as I've always done and, on top of that, to cook alongside him as well," Lazaroff-Puck said. "It's what I always dreamed of."

I'm reminded of a moment in Puck's 2021 documentary "Wolfgang," when Lazaroff said that cooking was a way for the chef to rewrite his childhood. "Is that something you can relate to?" I ask his son.

"A hundred percent," Lazaroff-Puck replied. "Getting to know each other through our profession has just fostered a way more beautiful familial relationship between us. It's been healing, I guess, might be a certain word to use."

Puck hopes that, someday, he can look down from heaven and watch his son run their restaurants better than he ever did. When that time comes, Lazaroff-Puck will be ready.

"People say all the time, 'Oh, it must be a lot of pressure to follow in your father's footsteps,' and I go, 'Sure, but pressure builds diamonds,'" he said. "I have to do this job; it feeds my soul."

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