Hot stuff
That was celebrity chef and restaurant mogul Wolfgang Puck hosting a wine dinner Wednesday night at The Source, his fine-dining mecca tucked into the Newseum.
The guest of honor? None other than Miljenko “Mike” Grgich, who helped put American wines on the worldwide stage. The Croatian-born Grgich made the white wine that bested France’s top offerings at the famous “Judgment of Paris” tasting in 1976 (recently depicted in the film “Bottle Shock”). He now helms his own winery in Napa Valley, Grgich Hills, whose wines were poured alongside Puck’s food. The beret-clad 85-year-old even regaled the crowd with a rendition of “You Are My Sunshine.”
It was a tune that the 120 guests almost didn’t get to hear. The first wave of guests to arrive were greeted by three fire trucks out front and a phalanx of firemen still occupying the restaurant. The reason? An exhaust problem had created some smoke inside. This, of course, did nothing but add more stress to the situation for Executive Chef Scott Drewno. “They came up with axes, and they said they thought it was coming through the wall,” he said. “I said, ‘Oh no, not the wall!'” But fortunately, the smoke was quelled, the wall was preserved and the five-course meal began on schedule.
As for Puck, he told us that he’s impressed not only with Washington’s fine-dining restaurants, but its ethnic food as well. In fact, he and his Ethiopian-born wife had lunch at the Ethiopian restaurant Etete in Shaw on Wednesday afternoon.
Puck also noted that since he came to America in 1974 from his native Austria, he’s now cooked for every president since Gerald Ford, the last being when he cooked twice for Barack Obama during fundraisers at David Geffen’s house in Los Angeles.
