TREASURE ISLAND – Culinary master Wolfgang Puck will join master chef Scott Conant to produce a five-course charity dinner Friday, Oct. 19, at The Club at Treasure Island in support of the Tampa Bay-based Edwards Family Foundation and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.
Puck is replacing master chef Nobu Matsuhisa who had to cancel recently to take care of a personal matter.
Puck, one of the planet’s most famous chefs, began cooking at his mother’s side in Austria before apprenticing at L’Ousteau de Baumaniere in Les Baux de Provence and the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Wolfgang immigrated to the United States in the early 1970s, developing his trailblazing cooking style in New York before being named the executive chef at the esteemed Ma Maison in Los Angeles. Less than a decade later, he opened his flagship restaurant, Spago, on Hollywood’s legendary Sunset Strip.
Wolfgang and Spago captured the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Chef of the Year, twice, in 1991 and 1998, and the James Beard Foundation Award for Restaurant of the Year in 1994. Wolfgang is the only chef in world history to have won the Outstanding Chef of the Year Award multiple times.
Puck has changed the way Americans cook and eat by mixing formal French techniques and Asian- and California-influenced aesthetics with the highest quality ingredients. His self-titled television show, “Wolfgang Puck,” debuted in 2000 on the Food Network and quickly became a ratings juggernaut.
Since being named Best New Chef by Food & Wine Magazine in 2004 and earning the coveted “Best New Restaurant” award from the James Beard Foundation for his L’Impero Italian restaurant, Conant has cemented his status as one of the world’s most popular, most respected American chefs. A natural on television, Conant has appeared on NBC’s “Today Show,” “Martha Stewart Living,” the Travel Channel’s “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations,” Bravo’s “Top Chef” and ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
In 2005, he published the best-selling cookbook “New Italian Cooking,” followed by 2008’s “Bold Italian,” both with Random House.
This will be the second in The Club at Treasure Island’s Culinary Masters dinner series. The Club’s first” event featured a five-course dinner prepared by Chef Emeril Lagasse last fall and raised $200,000, which was split between The Club’s official community partner, All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg and the Lagasse Foundation.
This year’s dinner gala will be limited to 100 guests. The price for nonmembers to attend the dinner is $500 per person.
For more information, call The Club’s concierge desk at 367-4511.
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