Gordon Ramsay revived the beef Wellington, Nobu Matsuhisa brought us black cod miso, and Wolfgang Puck, well, he’s the father of smoked salmon pizza.
Much like potato chips and cheese, Puck’s signature dish was a happy accident that helped change the way we eat. He believed pizza was the perfect vehicle for California’s bounty of fresh ingredients and, with the help of his pizza chef Ed LaDou, elevated the humble pie to a gourmet specialty.
The locals and celebrities couldn’t get enough. Johnny Carson was known to order 10 pizzas at a time and stick them in his freezer, inspiring Puck to launch a frozen-food empire, and the smoked salmon pizza has been served at the official Oscars after-party every year since 1994.
But you don’t need to book a trip to Beverly Hills or get nominated for an Academy Award to enjoy the pizza. I went behind the scenes at Spago, where the pie was invented, to learn how Puck makes his most iconic dish.
Wolfgang Puck’s smoked salmon pizza was inspired by a request from Joan Collins.
The actress came into Spago one day in 1982, the year Puck opened the restaurant, and requested smoked salmon with brioche. Puck had run out of bread but knew he needed to do something to keep the famously fiery “Dynasty” star happy.
“You don’t want to make Joan Collins mad,” Puck joked in his 2021 documentary “Wolfgang.”
Puck got the idea to add smoked salmon to baked pizza dough. He paired the salmon with crème fraîche and some dollops of caviar to impress Collins, who, at the time, was the highest-paid actress on TV. The unusual dish was an instant hit.
“It had no tomato sauce; it had no cheese,” legendary chef Nancy Silverton, who got her start at Spago, recalled in the documentary. “As simple as that sounds today, I don’t think anyone had done a pizza like that before.”
The smoked salmon pizza had a huge influence on Puck’s son, now president of the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group.
When Byron Lazaroff-Puck was in kindergarten, his parents organized a field trip to Spago for his class. The 5-year-olds were given mini chef coats and hats to wear while Puck showed them how to make pizza.
“I always look back on that really fondly, because it was the first time I felt really proud about what my family did,” Lazaroff-Puck told me. “And as I grew up and started working in the restaurants, it was always the station I felt so enamored with.”
The smoked salmon pizza was also one of the first dishes to spark Lazaroff-Puck’s interest in cooking.
“It has this confluence of flavors that is built upon multiple layers,” he added. “It was seminal in my own creative journey of getting interested in food. To be able to now teach it to others, too, is one of the coolest things I could ask for.”
And with that, it was my turn to learn!
We began by gathering the ingredients and molding the pizza dough.
If you want to make Puck’s smoked salmon pizza at home, you’ll need:
- 6 ounces of pizza dough
- 1 tablespoon of chili and garlic oil
- ¼ cup of thinly sliced red onion
- 2 tablespoons of dill cream (dill-infused crème fraîche)
- 2.5 ounces of thinly sliced smoked salmon
- 1 teaspoon of chopped fresh chives
- 1 tablespoon of sevruga caviar (optional)
After flouring the counter to prevent the dough from sticking, Lazaroff-Puck showed me how to stretch the dough into an 8-inch circle. The outer edge, he noted, should be a little thicker than the inner.
Then we brushed the dough with oil…
If you don’t have chili and garlic oil on hand, you can always use olive oil!
… and added the red onion.
We sprinkled the red onion slices evenly over the dough.
The dough is baked in Spago’s wood-fired pizza oven.
If you’re making this at home, Lazaroff-Puck recommends preheating the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and baking the dough on a pizza stone placed on the middle rack.
You’ll know the crust is ready when it’s golden brown, which should take around six to eight minutes. Remove the pizza from the oven and set it on a firm surface.
The pizza crust is topped with Spago’s dill cream.
You can make the cream ahead of time by mixing some crème fraîche with chopped dill. Add extra flavor with chopped shallots, a squeeze of lemon, and some salt and pepper.
Then it’s time to layer the smoked salmon slices.
Spago’s executive chef Ari Rosenson, who began working at the restaurant when he was 16, said the salmon is butchered and smoked in-house.
“The recipe has been altered very little over the years,” he added. “It’s got all the little things you look for in a good dish — sweet, sour, it just hits all the marks.”
I followed Lazaroff-Puck’s advice and arranged the slices of salmon so that they covered the entire pizza, making sure they slightly overlapped along the inner border.
The pizza is topped with chopped chives and dollops of caviar.
If you’re using caviar at home, Lazaroff-Puck recommends adding a small spoonful to the center of each slice.
One bite makes it easy to see why Puck’s smoked salmon pizza has been a classic for over 40 years.
Just as chef Rosenson said, Puck’s pizza hits every mark. The crust has that satisfying crackle from the wood-fired oven, the crème fraîche is light and bright, and the smoked salmon paired with caviar tastes like luxury personified.
It’s fun, it’s unexpected, and, frankly, it’s iconic.
All of the above could also be said of Puck, who, at 76, is still cooking all over the world, now with his son by his side.
And it all started with a pie.
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