What Wolfgang Puck Learned From His Failed $6M Brewery Bet
Wolfgang Puck didn’t get to where he is today by playing it safe. Over the past five decades, the Austrian chef and restaurateur has maintained cultural relevance with his forward-thinking restaurant concepts that bend unwritten culinary rules and step into uncharted territory.
It all started in 1982 when he opened his first restaurant, Spago, on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, which featured the chef’s take on California cuisine with famous dishes like his iconic smoked salmon pizza. The following year, Puck opened Chinois, a fusion restaurant that marries French cooking techniques with Asian flavors, in Santa Monica, Calif.
Today, the Wolfgang Puck empire encompasses over 20 fine-dining establishments across the globe — not including his laundry list of fast-casual restaurants and cafés. For the most part, his career has seen nothing but success, but even the best of the best have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. In Puck’s case, the biggest egg was Eureka Restaurant and Brewery, a bustling upscale L.A. brewpub that had all the ingredients for success, but came and went in less than five years.
A Dream Built on Nostalgia — and a Bit of Hubris
The tale begins in the late 1980s, several years after Puck had seen the fruits of his labor at Spago and Chinois fully ripen. “They were so successful that I thought I could do anything and it would be successful,” Puck said on a 2024 episode of VinePair’s “Taplines” podcast.
Brewpubs were virtually unheard of in the U.S. at the time, but Puck had grown up in Austria where they were a part of everyday life, so he sought to bring that experience to California. “I thought, ‘There’s nothing better than having a goulash or a sausage and a fresh beer on tap,’” he recalled. Puck found two business partners and a financial backer, and made moves to elevate the brewpub business model he grew up loving.
Credit: Spago
The team found a sizable plot in an industrial park and started building out what would become Eureka Brewery and Restaurant. Interior designer and Puck’s then-wife Barbara Lazaroff planned the layout and decor, going all-in on Steam Punk-adjacent flare. Decorative gears, bolts, and rivets featured prominently along the walls, chairs, and bar. There was a half-ton, 16-foot-long “computer-driven animated steel sculpture” in the main dining area. And copper flourishes accented nearly every surface from floor to ceiling. In 1990, Designers West Magazine dubbed Lazaroff’s work “Neo-Industrial Gold.”
Puck and co. assembled a team of chefs, recruited a sausage-maker from Munich, hired a brewmaster, and leased $6 million worth of brewing equipment from Germany. Eureka opened its doors to the public in 1989.
‘The House Built on Beer’
In its first year of business, Eureka proved to be a smash hit. “In ‘89, we did about $5 million for the year in business,” Puck said. “We actually did more business at Eureka than at Spago.” The brewpub had multiple beers on tap, including a pale lager, pilsner, and dark lager. An eclectic menu complemented them with everything from pasta dishes and traditional German sausages to quesadillas, seared salmon, and smoked duck.
According to a 1990 Los Angeles Times review of Eureka by food writer Charles Perry, the hype was real. Throughout the review, he repeatedly praised the restaurant, using words like “wonderful” and “exquisite” to describe the myriad dishes on offer. Perry only knocked a few of the entrées for being “peculiarly awkward and strained,” citing a lack of cohesiveness between dishes.
As for the beer, Perry had almost no notes, especially on the brewpub’s flagship lager. “Eureka is the house built on beer,” he wrote. “The beer is a good lager, one that follows the ancient Bavarian purity law (no ingredients allowed but malt, hops, yeast and water).”
Puck and his business partners planned to sell the beer beyond the walls of Eureka. But while the restaurant was booming, the brewhouse ran into issues with its product at off-premise accounts.
Spoiled Suds
As Perry mentioned in his review, Eureka’s beers were made under the rules of the Reinheitsgebot, a.k.a. the German Beer Purity Law, so none of the product was pasteurized.
“Because the beer stayed outside on trucks, it didn’t hold up in the bottle,” Puck explained. He recalled being on a Crystal Cruises ship to teach cooking classes and bringing two pallets of Eureka on board with him. “I tasted the beer and said, ‘This is not right.’ I opened another one, and then another one, and they were all the same,” he said. “So I knew we could not serve it — something was wrong.” Had it been refrigerated from the brewery to its destination, this wouldn’t have been an issue.
The restaurant continued to flourish, but it closed in 1992 amid the L.A. riots. As for the brewery, Puck’s partners were apparently unwilling to take necessary steps to fix the pasteurization problem. “I had an Austrian brewer come over and help me with the beer, but the partners said, ‘We don’t need this guy. We’ll do it ourselves,’” he explained.
The partners refused to leave, so Puck made his own exit, putting an end to Eureka (the restaurant). According to the L.A. Times, the partners were in talks with Samuel Adams execs about taking over the brewing facility, but that never came to fruition. In 1993, with roughly $1 million in debt, the brewery closed for good. “We were supposed to produce a million cases a year and I think we produced only about 35,000,” Puck said.
In the end, Eureka was ahead of its time. Although Puck held up his part of the deal as a chef, he ultimately bit off more than he could chew. “It was a big lesson for me about doing things I can’t control,” he said. “The beer — even if it’s not complicated — has to be set up and done the right way to have a chance to be successful.”
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