Wolfgang Puck, the Original Celebrity Chef, Is Still Keeping Busy Amy Dickerson for The New York Times Wolfgang Puck with customers at his entirely reinvented Spago Beverly Hills. THIRTY years ago, Wolfgang Puck opened Spago in West Hollywood, a restaurant that is still celebrated across Los Angeles, pioneering a lively new style of California cooking and offering a festive rebuke to all the white tablecloths in town. But these days, Mr. Puck's name resonates with most Americans not for what he did in his kitchen but for the one-man culinary behemoth he built. His smiling face peers from organic-soup cans and boxes of frozen pizza in supermarkets. Wolfgang Puck concessions sell grab-and-go meals in airports. There are Wolfgang Puck cookware, knives, coffee makers and rice steamers. At 63, Mr. Puck, with his tart Austrian accent, has been a mainstay on cooking shows for 25 years, a celebrity chef long before the phrase was invented. Today there are 101 Puck restaurants, from Singapore to London. With his relentless merchandising, self-branding and kitchen globe-trotting, with his ease in moving from the highbrow to the lower-brow, Mr. Puck has often seemed in danger of sliding into culinary parody, more Barry Becher pitching Ginsu knives on late-night television ("Wait, there's more!") than the avatar of California cuisine. "When he started showing up at airports, people were shocked," said Evan Kleiman, the restaurateur who just closed the acclaimed Angeli Caffe in Los Angeles and the host of "Good Food" on the public radio station KCRW. Yet three weeks ago, Mr. Puck unveiled an entirely reinvented Spago Beverly Hills, with a décor he describes as "edgy," a soundtrack of Arcade Fire and Spoon, and a menu sprinkled with adventurous small-plate offerings that have some of his bluer-hair customers wincing. This year he received the James Beard Foundation lifetime achievement award. And even as he presents an overhauled Spago, he is marking the anniversary of the luxurious restaurant he opened as part of the refurbishment of that Hollywood classic, the Hotel Bel-Air, named (but of course) Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air. By almost every measure, he has not only survived but thrived, earning lasting respect from younger chefs, many of whom trained in his kitchens. Other peers wandered from their stoves as they became boldface fixtures on television or Page Six. Mr. Puck, ever restless, has continued to refashion his restaurants, his menus, his dishes and ultimately himself. "Why stop?" he said, standing in the Spago dining room the other morning, the smell of paint fresh in the air, as workers rolled in tables and hammered down final touches. What would you do at home? Even winning the James Beard award seemed more an annoyance than an honor. "He was like, "What do they think, that I retired?" " said Ruth Reichl, a former restaurant critic for The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, who has been close to Mr. Puck for much of his career. Mr. Puck's ambition does not appear to be dulled by success or age. The other night, he moved from kitchen to table with the genial spark that recalled his presence on the same floor a decade ago. He showed off the artwork on the walls, curated by his wife, Gelila Assefa; the receding canopy over the outdoor dining room framed by two outdoor fireplaces; and the soft lines and muted colors of the $4 million renovation by the designer Waldo Fernandez. "Before, it was more ungapatchka, as we say in Austria," Mr. Puck said. With little niches and this and that all over the place. It somehow had this dark feeling. Nancy Silverton, an owner of Osteria Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza (and a graduate of the Spago kitchen), said she picked up the telephone the other day to hear Mr. Puck's unmistakable voice. "He must be under an incredible amount of pressure, with the transition, the expectations," she said. "But he called me up and said, "Mama" - he always calls me Mama - "Mama, how come you haven't made a reservation to come to my restaurant?" " The very fact that Spago Beverly Hills continues to exist, much less prosper, is striking at a time when the Los Angeles restaurant scene is so dynamic and punishing. Over the last year, some of this city's most popular spots have announced they were closing: Angeli Caffe, Campanile, Sushi Nozawa and Lou among them. One place on Los Angeles Magazine's list of this year's 10 best new restaurants that was all but impossible to get into eight months ago had empty tables on a recent Friday night. The extravagance Mr. Puck championed at Spago has taken a back seat to restaurants that are quieter, smaller, more adventurous and less pricey.