my chocolate is free from waxes, which is very important. DC: Did you have to experiment a lot to get the right taste? LG: Yes, I did experiment quite a bit. Especially when it came down to three varieties of dark chocolate, and I also made a “milk” chocolate (milk from nuts). I easily found guinea pigs from vegetarian, vegan, and meat-eating lifestyles to understand palate differences. DC: What’s the hardest part of making chocolate? LG: The time to pour and wrap each piece is challenging when making over 300 pieces at a sitting. DC: How long does it take to make a batch? LG: About nine hours with two people, of whom my dear friend Kat is one; she works for chocolate and little pay when she assists me. DC: Since you changed your diet, is your palate different? LG: I believe my palate is cleaner. I have eaten different foods when no other choice remains, only to feel a coat of whatever I had eaten cover my tongue. Flavors are so much more defined. DC: Do you have a guilty pleasure? LG: I do, and lately I make raw vegan almond cookies and dip them in my chocolate. Or I eat my chocolate, or I eat chocolate banana raw ice cream (made with almond milk). DC: Do you miss cheeseburgers, pizza, milkshakes, that kind of stuff? LG: Sure, but I try to replicate them in other healthy ways. A milkshake is easy raw, using my homemade almond milk with any kind of fruit, or just using vanilla beans in a high-speed blender. I make my own pizza, because at this stage regular pizza makes me very ill. And I made a raw (veggie) burger not too long ago — that even my most carnivorous friend enjoyed. — Helen Moore
King of the kitchen: executive chef Eric Klein
The perception of who you work for, people want to label you sometimes. “Oh, you work at a fancy place on the Strip.” I came to Las Vegas to work with Wolfgang Puck, and I left for a while and have done other things. But when Wolfgang called me to ask me to come back to Spago, I didn’t think too long about it. It’s the best thing I could have ever done. I don’t work for Wolfgang, I work with Wolfgang, and all these people. We’re partners. We work together, and we are the restaurant.
Executive chef
“It’s like being a mason, building a house in one day, and then overnight someone comes and blows it up and you have to start from scratch the next day.” Eric Klein, executive chef at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago
Desert Companion: When you meet someone for the first time and tell them you’re a chef, what’s the reaction? Eric Klein: They say, “Where are you working?” DC: And you say, “Wolfgang Puck’s Spago.” Then what? EK: They say, “Oh my god, you must be good.” DC: Is that strange to you? EK: You know, “chef” is a big word. At the end of the day, I love cooking. I’m very humble.
WE JUST HAD TO ASK
DC: What was your first job like? EK: I was 13 and it was a small restaurant in Alsace. You see, I’m a farmer, in my heart. A country boy. My mother asked me what I wanted to be when I was young. I thought, I can be a farmer, I can be a butcher like you, but my mom said no. She wanted something better for me. She wanted me to learn something, to travel the world and see things, and have a better life. Of course, she didn’t understand what she was saying because the restaurant business is even more like a farmer, hard work! But she wanted me to experience things and I appreciate that.
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D esert Co m panion
JANUARY 2013
DC: So you were always cooking? EK: Well, sometimes when you make a decision for your life, everything is already in front of you but you don’t know how to use it. I grew up on a farm next to a coven full of nuns. Every Sunday I’d go to help and I spent all my time in the kitchen. It felt very comfortable. I loved to help and to make people happy but I didn’t know what I was doing. So my mother said I should be like my cousin and work in a restaurant, and that lead to an apprenticeship at a restaurant called ... oh, I can’t remember, it’s been a long time. DC: How is being a chef different in Europe than in the United States? EK: It’s very different. In Austria or Germany or France, if you’re the chef, people expect to see you all the time. In America, people are more open, more flexible with their dining. And they’re not doing three, four, five turns at dinner like we do in Vegas. This restaurant is an animal. Also in Vegas, you have to constantly adapt in order to understand what your customer likes.