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"\n\nWolfgang Puck\u2019s a cooking rock star: He\u2019s got a charming Austrian accent like Christoph Waltz, an empire of fine-dining restaurants, and, hell, even some acting credits (most recently 90210 and The Smurfs). The acclaimed chef and Food Network veteran also has dozens of cool stories to back up the legend, all filled with a sense of adventure\u2014and occasionally mischief. Like the time he ordered escargot and frog legs for his kids at L\u2019Ami Louis in Paris. &amp;quot;I told them the frog was chicken,&amp;quot; he said. Or ditched a girlfriend in his youth to enjoy lobster salad with black truffles at La Maison Troisgros in Roanne. &amp;quot;She wasn\u2019t into food.&amp;quot; He\u2019s watched a grandma bark orders at a family run restaurant in Naples, blown $4,500 on sushi in Beverly Hills, and dined in total silence in Kyoto. Puck has experienced it all.\n\nWith his new book on eating right, Wolfgang Puck Makes It Healthy, out now, GQ checked in with a very fit and energetic 64-year-old Puck. Apparently, his new ercise regimen and leaner style of cooking is working very well. &amp;quot;I ski and play tennis better now than twenty years ago!&amp;quot; he said. He even watches his sugar intake, sending back dessert after a bite or two. &amp;quot;I tell the waiter not to tell the chef.&amp;quot; But lest we forget, this is the same man who\u2019s powered through a thirty-seven-course meal at elBulli. Looking back on calorie carefree times, Puck told us about the fifteen meals that blew his mind.\n\n\n\n1. Lai Ching Yuen\n\n Hong Kong, China \n\n&amp;quot;One year, I went to Hong Kong and didn\u2019t realize it was Chinese New Year, so all the restaurants I planned to visit were closed. Lai Ching Yuen used to be at Hong Kong\u2019s Regent hotel, now called the InterContinental, which is where I was staying. I remember thinking, \u2019Oh shit, now I have to eat in the hotel.\u2019 Who wants to stay in the hotel and eat in the hotel, you know? But after I went there, I thought, \u2019I don\u2019t have to go out anymore. I could eat here every night and finish all the dishes on the menu.\u2019 I remember we had scallops sandwiched with pear. They also had great suckling pig, peking duck, and Hong Kong\u2019s famous hairy crab. Still today, I\u2019d say it\u2019s the best Chinese food I\u2019ve ever had.&amp;quot;\n\n2. Urbanek\n\nVienna, Austria\n\n&amp;quot;When I\u2019m in Vienna, I have lunch at Urbanek in the Naschmarkt, a market at the center of the city. The owner has this little bar, and different farmers bring him cheese and ham or someone\u2019s housewife makes a great roasted pork, and so on. Great wine, too. The mayor of Vienna eats there as well. And instead of sitting down, everyone stands and talks, so by 4 p.m. it becomes a big party. The guidebooks don\u2019t even mention this spot, but all the locals go here.&amp;quot;\n\n3. Kitcho\n\nKyoto, Japan\n\n&amp;quot;I ate here on one of my first trips to Japan. Every table has it\u2019s own private room. It was total silence. You were sitting on the floor, and they just brought the food out. I remember one of the dishes was scallops on a hot stone. It was the mid-\u201980s, so for me, that was something totally different. It was so quiet there. There was no music or noise in the restaurant. Since you have your own room, you can only talk to the person you are with. In America, the restaurants are bustling and people are laughing and having a good time. Here, it was serious business\u2014with great food. Very intimate. You don\u2019t want to be there with a person you have nothing to say to.&amp;quot;\n\n4. Moulin de Mougin\n\nMougins, France\n\n&amp;quot;The South of France has always been a special place for me. Chef Roger Verg\u00E9 of Mougin was not only one of the greats, he was also a good people person. When he walked around in the dining room, he made you feel good right away. He looked like a movie star\u2014like Cary Grant with a white mustache. I remember he used to drive a red Ferrari. He was a cool guy. The food was so good because it had the flavors from the C&amp;amp;#xF4;te d\u2019Azur in Provence. On my first visit, Roger made a lobster salad with the black truffles, and I also had stuffed zucchini flower with mushroom. I remember I had a girlfriend at the time and I said, \u2019No, no, you can stay at the hotel in Cannes, I\u2019m going to lunch.\u2019 I went by myself because she wasn\u2019t into food. I think she was a vegetarian. When you remember something for thirty years, it must\u2019ve been good.&amp;quot;\n\n5. Steirereck \n\nVienna, Austria\n\n&amp;quot;The first time I went here was probably eighteen years ago. It\u2019s really a world-class restaurant. They do Austrian food so well. I ate the wiener schnitzel there and said, \u2019This is better than what my mother used to make.&amp;quot; It was so crispy. I had some Austrian desserts like strudel and kaiserschmarrn as well, which were amazing. They do international cuisine, too, but when I go, I always order their modernized Austrian food. They also have too many different kinds of breads, so you have to watch it when you eat there.&amp;quot;\n\n6. Oustau de Baumani&amp;amp;#xE8;re \n\nProvence, France\n\n&amp;quot;I worked here for two-and-a-half years, and made about $100 a month. When I worked there, I didn\u2019t have the luxury of sitting at a table, so going back now, with my wife and children, was a special experience. Last summer, I had their leg of lamb with green peppercorn juice, and the gratin de finnois\u2014potato gratin with artichoke mousse. On that June evening, eating on the terrace, looking at the beautiful rocks and old village on top, I thought, \u2019Now I really get what a three-star restaurant is.\u2019 Plus, if you\u2019re with a person you love\u2014I was with my wife\u2014it\u2019s even better.&amp;quot;\n\n7. La Tour d\u2019Argent \n\nParis, France\n\n&amp;quot;About ten years ago, when I was doing shows for the Food Network, I ate at La Tour d\u2019Argent with my wife while we were dating. We sat at a table overlooking the Seine. It was like Paris on a movie set. They\u2019re famous for their duck; they take off the breast and the leg, and then press out the blood from the carcass and bone. Then they make sauce with a little brandy, a little port wine, and thicken it with the duck blood. The way they do it is well worth watching.&amp;quot;\n\n8. L\u2019Ami Louis\n\nParis, France\n\n&amp;quot;This one\u2019s funny. I went to L\u2019Ami Louis with my children, and ordered escargot and frog\u2019s legs. My kids had never seen escargot in the shell before, so when the dish came, they screamed in shock, \u2019Papa!\u2019 I didn\u2019t do it on purpose; I forgot the escargot was served that way&amp;amp;&amp;quot; For the frog legs, I told them the frog was chicken. Afterwards, I said, \u2019You know, these are frogs you\u2019re eating.\u2019 [Laughs]  To finish, we had c&amp;amp;#xF4;te de buf with their famous potatoes. They line the pan with duck fat and butter, and bake it in the oven with garlic, so it\u2019s really tender inside.&amp;quot;\n\n9. The Fat Duck\n\nBerkshire, England\n\n&amp;quot;The Fat Duck was a great surprise. It\u2019s not where I would take my kids or go every week, but once in a while, it\u2019s a place to totally immerse yourself in the food. Chef Heston Blumenthal presents each meal in a special way: for one course, he gave us a little iPod to listen to the sound of the sea while we ate sashimi. It was served on a beautiful glass plate, and below it was a little sandbox. It\u2019s a really different experience.&amp;quot;\n\n10. elBulli\n\nCatalonia, Spain\n\n&amp;quot;Years ago, I had a thirty-seven course meal at elBulli. We started at 8:30, which is unusually early for Spain, and finished at 1:30 in the morning. Half of the food I didn\u2019t recognize, and the other half, my wife said, &amp;quot;You eat that, I don\u2019t want that.&amp;quot; [Laughs] We ate and drank so much that we had to get a hotel nearby...I didn\u2019t want to drive back to Barcelona. After, I wondered which dish I\u2019d cook myself or serve at my restaurant, and then realized I couldn\u2019t: Having a dish separate from the entire meal would be like watching a scene from a movie without seeing what comes before or after\u2014it wouldn\u2019t make sense.&amp;quot;\n\n11. Masa Sushi \n\nBeverly Hills, California \n\n&amp;quot;Chef Masa Takayama had, and still might have, the best sushi bar in the world. The most expensive, too. When I went to his previous location in Beverly Hills (there\u2019s one in New York now, at the Time Warner Center), I brought eight people and took over the whole sushi bar. Then I got the bill, and it was $4,500 or something like that. Masa makes everything for you there personally. One dish costs probably $100 or $200, and the Japanese platters are served with bows and everything.&amp;quot;\n\n12. Lo Scoglio\n\nNaples, Italy \n\n&amp;quot;We went here by boat and tied the boat up on a dock right next to the restaurant. It\u2019s family run, so you have the grandmother who\u2019s 80 years old, standing in the kitchen telling everyone what to do and pointing her finger at them. I ordered fish and told them to make whatever they thought was best. They made me a great fish soup with the head, and cooked spaghetti with the fish as well, so it had a lot of flavor. The rest of the fish was baked in the oven with lemon, olive oil, chili, and spice. It was really simple. They also served it with great vegetables, like eggplants and beans. But no one spoke English and the grandma was amazing, the way she ordered everybody around. You really felt like you were in Italy.&amp;quot;\n\n13. Martin Berasategui\n\nSan Sebastian, Spain\n\n&amp;quot;Everybody talks about San Sebastian being the food capital of the world, because they have the most three-star restaurants, with a very modern approach to Spanish-style food. At Berasategui, I remember having a totally frozen version of Irish coffee. It was made with a little bit of coffee granita and a little sorbet with Irish whiskey. It was a really, really tasty dessert.&amp;quot; \n\n14. Mugaritz\n\nSan Sebastian, Spain\n\n&amp;quot;Mugaritz is another great restaurant in San Sebastian. You walk in the kitchen and they have like thirty chefs and maybe twenty people eating in the dining room. There\u2019s about fifteen to twenty courses, all with a really interesting interpretation. It\u2019s like having a painter like Picasso as your chef, and the meal comes out in all blue or in cubes. That\u2019s what the food\u2019s like there. It\u2019s so different.&amp;quot; \n\n15. [La Maison Troisgros\n\n](http://www.troisgros.fr/)Roanne, France\n\n&amp;quot;About forty years ago, when I was a kid living in France, I ate here with a friend and had black truffles for the first time. We also had roasted lamb and spinach with black truffles on top. The smell of it was amazing. Paul Bocuse was sitting at the table next to me. If you\u2019re a musician, that\u2019s like sitting next to your idol, like Jimi Hendrix of Mick Jagger. For me, Bocuse was the god of cooking. I couldn\u2019t even eat I was so nervous, but I still remember the flavor of those truffles.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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