AN international celebrity chef may soon open a restaurant at the new airport complex.
American-Austrian Chef Wolfgang Puck, who was in Bahrain on a two-day visit, revealed that he is planning to open a restaurant at Bahrain International Airport.
“We have 28 upscale restaurants and about 80 restaurants at different airports, and we are even going to have a meeting about opening one at the new Bahrain airport,” he told the GDN yesterday.
The 70-year-old showcased two culinary events for guests who enjoyed a ‘Back to my roots’ dinner at CUT by Wolfgang Puck  and a Chinois pop-up dinner at re/Asian Cuisine.
He said his first beginnings were in a restaurant helping his mother who worked there as a professional chef.
“When I was 14, the owner of the hotel found me a job as an apprentice,” he said.
“So I quit school and worked as an apprentice for three years and then I moved to France and worked in different restaurants for seven years.
“I then moved to the US and worked a year in Indianapolis and from 1975 I have been in Los Angeles.
“I started Spago in 1982 and opened it in Tokyo in 1983, the same year I opened Chinois.
“I did consulting for a while and we really started expanding in the 1990s even adding café-style restaurants.”
It was in 2007 when recession hit the US that he decided to expand internationally.
“We opened the first restaurant in London and then one in Singapore.”
About his visit to Bahrain he said: “Normally I come for the Bahrain Formula One, but this time we decided to do something different.”
Chef Wolfgang said he was very happy to open two restaurants in Bahrain because “the people are very nice, very polite here, they seem very happy and it is a more open society.”
He has won numerous awards including the James Beard Restaurant of the Year Award for Spago Hollywood, 2001 to 2002 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Service Show, and two Michelin stars in the 2008 and 2009 Los Angeles Michelin Guide for Spago Beverly Hills amongst others.
Both CUT and re/Asian are located at the Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain Bay.