As the twenty-first century gets its legs, Las Vegas is known as a fine dining mecca - one of the best restaurant cities in the country, maybe even in the world. But that wasn't the case when Wolfgang Puck came to town. Until the early '90s, Las Vegas was known for its bargain buffets and big cheap slabs of prime rib - and not much else, at least as far as restaurants were concerned. Still, Puck decided to join the long line of entrepreneurs who decided, for better or worse, to gamble on Sin City. Retail developers Sheldon Gordon and Mel Simon, friends of Puck, were building the Forum Shops at Caesars. "Sheldon was looking for tenants," Puck said. Puck was no stranger to Las Vegas. "I always used to go to watch the fights. I said, 'Why not go there and do a restaurant?'" His eyes were open: "I thought it was a risk, in a way." But he had yet to find out just how much of a risk. Spago Las Vegas opened in early December 1992. And those who know Las Vegas know just how quiet things are during most of December. "In the first few weeks of December, it was so slow, I thought I was going to kill myself," Puck said. "The way Sheldon was telling me, it would be 24 hours a day and crazy. The first time we opened, I said, 'Jesus Christ, there are only 40 dinners, and the next day only 60 dinners.' And it continued like that." Things would pick up in a few days, people around him promised: the National Finals Rodeo - always a bright spot of busy-ness during the quiet of December - was on the way. But that would provide a little bit of culture shock for Puck. He started noticing all the cowboy hats, all the tight jeans and pointed boots and big belt buckles. He thought these locals dressed a little differently than the people back home in California. "I thought they were people from Vegas," Puck said. Only later did he find out that many NFR fans come from "Oklahoma or east Texas or somewhere." But if the NFR fans seemed a little strange to Puck, they apparently thought the same of Spago. "They came up to the kitchen," Puck said. "They'd never seen an open kitchen. They thought it was a buffet." Once the cowboys left town, the pre-New Year's Eve doldrums didn't help matters. "In San Francisco and Los Angeles, December was the busiest time," Puck said. But things were different in Las Vegas. "They said it was the slow time, but I didn't think it would be that slow," he said. "I was really nervous. I had to go home and drink a bottle of wine in front of the TV to fall asleep, and then wake up at 6 in the morning with a headache and then go back and think about what I was going to do." What he would do was stick it out and have a successful restaurant - one that's credited with starting the Las Vegas restaurant revolution, with Puck its leading patriot. And the state of Las Vegas dining would never be the same. "I think Las Vegas now has great restaurants," Puck said. "Restaurants and Cirque du Soleil are the main things in Las Vegas. Now restaurants have become a major tool of attracting people to Las Vegas." And how does Puck feel about that legacy? "It doesn't make me feel bad," he said. "It's not that I'm going to take it to the grave." As it turned out, other celebrity chefs had had their eye on the growth and development of Las Vegas in the early '90s but were waiting for someone to take the plunge. Once Puck jumped in with both feet, others started dipping in a toe. "Then I brought Mark Miller here, and little by little...," Puck said. "I think then we had Emeril come. And then the Bellagio," with its full complement of restaurants run by celebrity chefs. The rest is culinary history. Puck's road to Las Vegas began in one of the few countries that hasn't been featured in a Strip resort theme. He was born in St. Veit, Austria, to a hotel chef who cooked traditional Austrian cuisine and would serve to be a culinary inspiration for her son. Like most European chefs of his generation (Puck was born in 1949) he was apprenticed at a young age. Starting at 14, he said, "mostly... was normal. If you learned a profession, it wasn't something unique that you started at 14. It sounds a little crazy now, because I have a son (Cameron) who is 14 years old. (Son Byron is about six years younger.) If he were to leave town to do an apprenticeship, I'd be so nervous." Puck remembers those days as tough ones. "It was very difficult for kids who were 14 years old," he said. "All of a sudden, on Sunday morning, instead of going skiing, I had to go to work and cook. It wasn't really cooking, peeling potatoes and onions and hearing people yell at me. In the afternoon, I had to clean the stove in the kitchen. That's why I tell everybody 12 hours is only half a day." Despite the slightly Dickensian beginnings of his career, Puck had found his niche. At age 17, he moved 1,000 miles away to France. He worked in France for seven years, at the three-star Hotel de Paris in Monaco, Maxim's in Paris and L'Oustau de Baumaniere in Provence. But America was always in his thoughts. "Every young kid at that time dreamed of coming to America," he said. "Everybody thought in America, everybody's all right because they drive all those big cars. I was drawn from far away." Still, New York presented a bit of culture shock. "I didn't like it, because Paris is such a beautiful city and New York is so different," Puck said. "I didn't like the job I had in New York." A friend got him a job in Indianapolis and told him about the auto races. "Indianapolis; that sounds great," Puck remembered thinking. He rode a Greyhound bus for two days. More culture shock: The young chef who'd worked in Paris and New York was quite unprepared for the prosaic American Midwest. On arrival, "I said, 'That's Indianapolis. Oh.' It didn't matter what I thought. I had no money left. I had to stay. I couldn't go back to New York or anything." His Indianapolis sojourn would last only a year. The company that managed the restaurant, La Tour, lost its contract with Indiana National Bank. The company also, as it happened,managed a Los Angeles restaurant called Ma Maison. When Puck moved to Ma Maison, he said, it "at that time as a restaurant was nothing. Six months after, it started to do OK, and then it got better and better and better. "And in '82 we opened Spago," on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. In the ensuing couple of decades, the Puck empire has grown to include, at press-time, 11 fine-dining restaurants, 45 casual and quick-service restaurants (with commitments for 165 more), a frozen-food line, canned soups, videos, and cookbooks. But Puck is philosophical about his phenomenal success. "Doing well doesn't mean just having a lot of restaurants," he said. "Doing well means doing the right thing - training a lot of young people to do the right thing." He's extremely proud, he said, that his restaurants rank as the kind of places "where you would send your best friends to eat." And he's still thinking ahead. "You have different dreams every night," Puck said. "There are certain things I'd like to do, and then I do them and it's no big deal. I want to be successful in Japan. I have three cafes and want to do an upscale restaurant there. I want to be successful in the frozen-food line, and canned soup. At the end of the day, for me the most important thing is that the customers are happy, and that they come back." Purchase the book and also get the recipes to: Postrio Baby Arugula Salad with Goat Cheese Fondue, Pumpkin Ravioli, and Postrio Salmon en Papillote complete with full-page, color photographs.