Wolfgang Puck Café

Summer Menu

Summer was coming, and Jennifer Jasinski wanted to give customers at the Wolfgang Puck Cafes a lighter fare. "I didn't think we had enough seasonal, Southern California bikini food on the menu," she says.

What she and the team at Wolfgang Puck Food Co. came up with last year was a summer menu featuring a variety of new flavors and entrée-size salads that earned them the 1999 MenuMasters Award for Best Limited Time Offer.

Introduced into the 15 Wolfgang Puck Cafes in Southern California, Seattle, Las Vegas and Orlando, the summer menu was an instant hit.

"Jennifer and some others did a nice job putting it together -- so good, in fact, that when we did a major menu change in the fall, we kept everything but two items from the summer menu," says Frank Guidara, the company's president and chief executive.

"Customers wouldn't allow us to take them off," adds the 31-year-old Jasinski, who has been the supervising corporate chef for the Wolfgang Puck Food Co. for two years.

"Since the day I started here, Frank and I had an idea where we thought the menu should go," Jasinski explains. "Every four or five months we'd take things a step closer. The summer menu was another step."

Where will they eventually end up? "In this business you never really get there," Guidara says. "Our goal two years ago was to expand the menu so that when customers walked into a Wolfgang Puck Cafe, they'd always find something interesting and intriguing. We've now taken the menu from 39 items to about 70.

Providing valuable input to Jasinski on the summer menu were supervising chefs Brant Holland, currently at the Wolfgang Puck Cafe in the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, and Robin Sotter, of the café at Disney World.

Items for the award-winning menu were, of course, run by Wolfgang Puck, says Jasinski, who has worked with the renowned chef for 10 years, many of them spent opening restaurants around the country.

A taste panel also got its turn. Members included Guidara; Howard Drusin, vice president of purchasing; and Kevin O'Connor, senior vice president of operations. "Each of them is different," Jasinski says. "Kevin is more of a meat-and-potatoes guy. Frank likes a lot of things. Each has his own perspective, just like our customers.

Before working for the cafes, Jasinski was sent to Paris to work at LeDoyan, a restaurant owned by friends of Wolfgang Puck. "This was my rounding out," Jasinski says. "I think Wolfgang said to himself, 'Okay, I've had Jennifer for eight years. Now I'm going to polish her up a bit and add the finishing touches.' "

When Jasinski returned to the United States, she was slated to be the chef at Spiaggo in Palo Alto, Calif. But when the opening got delayed, Wolfgang asked her to help out at the cafes. "Make some new menus. Do some exciting food."

And she did. "I like taking classics, especially in the cafes where people aren't quite as adventurous as they are in Spiaggo," she says. "They want something innovative but not crazy."

In Jasinski's view the tuna nicoise, her personal favorite, was ideal for the cafes. "I know French food is coming back, so we did a really nice charred, rare coriander-crusted tuna nicoise with green beans and summer tomatoes."

Another popular item was the Cobb salad. "People can have these as an entrée and not feel weighted down," she explains.

The summer menu featured drinks like Lemonade Mint Cooler with lemon-flavored vodka and Pineapple Pipeline with Hawaiian gold pineapple aged with dark rum and brown sugar. Entrees were led by the tuna nicoise and two varieties of Cobb salad -- shrimp and grilled chicken. Crispy rock shrimp salad with orange segments, sesame aioli, snow peas, bell peppers and napa cabbage was a hit.

Wolf's shrimp gazpacho, with grilled shrimp, heirloom tomatoes and bell pepper, also was a winner but didn't make the ongoing menu because of its reliance on seasonal tomatoes.