Wolfgang Puck has been feeding Hollywood after the Oscars for more than 30 years — and the scale of the operation is staggering.
As the lead chef behind the Academy Awards’ Governors Ball, Puck oversees the massive post-ceremony dinner that serves nearly 2,000 actors, filmmakers, and industry insiders just minutes after the final statuette is handed out.
Behind the scenes, his team of chefs work for days transforming the ballroom kitchen into a high-volume operation capable of turning out tens of thousands of dishes in a matter of hours.
The menu blends luxury ingredients with crowd-pleasing comfort food. Guests can graze on dishes like wagyu beef sliders, sushi, and other high-end bites — alongside one of the event’s most famous staples, Puck’s truffle chicken pot pie.
We went behind the scenes with Puck and his culinary team as they prepared for the Governors Ball, where hundreds of staff members work together to plate roughly 30,000 dishes for Hollywood’s biggest stars.
See behind the scenes of the 98th Oscars Governors Ball in the video below, and keep reading to learn about some of the most expensive dishes on the menu.The smoked salmon lavosh, topped with caviar and shaped like an Oscar, has been on the menu for decades. The team went through $24,000 of the fish eggs.
180 pounds of wagyu beef are flown in from Miyazaki, Japan. Chefs cut it into small slices, sear it at the last minute, and serve it with a little ponzu, fresh scallions, and fresh grated wasabi.
Miyazaki Wagyu beef has been a regular menu item for years. Here, Wolfgang Puck pours liquid nitrogen over some at the 2019 Governors Ball. The extreme cold gives the meat a perfectly crisp exterior once seared.
The truffle chicken pot pie is a Hollywood favorite. Puck says they’ve been on the menu for about 25 years. “This is one of our most important dishes, one of the dishes everybody asks for.”
Chefs fill 1,200 ramekins with the pot pie base and then top each with black truffle shavings and a circle of puff pastry before hitting the oven.
One chef said this bowl contained about $4,000 worth of black truffles, which are used in the chicken pot pies and the smoked salmon lavosh.
Wolfgang Catering also flies in 100 pounds of ahi tuna from Hawaii.
These American wagyu New York strip steaks cost $55 a pound at retail.
Everything’s made from scratch, including the buns for the wagyu sliders.
Puck’s team pours dark chocolate into molds to make 3,500 mini Oscar statues. Every guest gets one, whether they won or lost in the competition for the real ones.
Once “best director” is announced, it’s a mad rush in the kitchen for chefs to plate and add garnishes to every one of the 30,000 small plates.
Leftover food is packed and sent to a downtown mission, Puck said. The mission then distributes it to people who need meals.
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