By Eileen Bailey Driscoll

As the star chef of Ma Maison in Los Angeles 30 years ago, Wolfgang Puck remembers the owner focusing only on the restaurant's VIP diners. The young chef vowed then that when he opened his own restaurant, he would treat everyone like VIPs.

And he has. In 1982, the Austrian-born chef found a space on Sunset Boulevard where he opened Spago, an instant hangout for Hollywood's rich and famous and other food-lovers who appreciated his clever take on the classics. Puck's egalitarian hospitality and signature gourmet pizzas put him on the culinary map, a position he built upon with his subsequent opening of Spago Beverly Hills.

“When you have a restaurant, you are entertaining people in your home,” says Puck. “I always go around to every table and talk to guests. I don’t like snooty restaurants. When you are friendly, people come back and they tell their friends about you.

“It’s easy to be nice to Sharon Stone or Michael Douglas, because you recognize them. But we have guests coming from all over the country, some of them have made reservations months before, and we want everyone to have a great experience at our restaurants.” Chef Puck currently has restaurants in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Maui, and Atlantic City.

Puck’s Las Vegas restaurants include Wolfgang Bar & Grill at MGM Grand, offering America’s favorite dishes, and Trattoria del Lupo at Mandalay Bay, known for stylish Italian food. Puck points out that both are affordable: “I’m not so impressed with the complicated, intimidating food some chefs do. You don’t have to serve foie gras, truffles and lobster, and everyone doesn’t always want to sit for four hours and pay $400 for dinner.”

At these Las Vegas locations, “you can eat wonderfully for $30,” he says. “You can have fresh fish roasted in our wood-burning oven, great pastas and risottos, or you can just eat a pizza at the bar.”

“High quality, fresh ingredients are the key to great food,” says David Robins, Executive Chef and Managing Partner for the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group. He notes that growers who supply local farmer’s markets provide much of the fresh produce used at Lupo and the Grill. Fish, meat and additional produce are flown in daily from purveyors across the country. Still, when discussing the restaurants, the first phrases out of Robins’ mouth were not about food or service, but about that unique element found in every Wolfgang Puck operation: sincere hospitality.