Father, Son and the Steakhouse That Changed Los Angeles: CUT Turns 20

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Four Seasons

As CUT Beverly Hills celebrates two decades, Wolfgang Puck and his son, Byron, explain why running it as a family business, with no corporate ladder, has been the key to its success.

When the Beverly Wilshire offered Wolfgang Puck a space a few blocks from Spago, it was his team, not Puck, who wanted a steakhouse. “You make the best steaks,” they told him. His reply: “It might be boring.”

It wasn’t. CUT opened inside Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, in June 2006, in a dining room designed by Richard Meier, Puck’s neighbor and tennis partner. The steaks came off a wood-burning grill instead of a broiler, with sauces alongside, and the sides reached back to his Austrian childhood: creamed spinach with a fried egg on top, still on the menu two decades later. The restaurant went on to earn a Michelin star in 2019 and 2021, and the flagship now anchors seven CUT restaurants, from London and Singapore to Bahrain, New York, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., with Abu Dhabi next. “Today, every steak restaurant that opens uses a little bit of our formula,” Puck says.

Byron Lazaroff-Puck was 11 when CUT opened. Today he works beside his father every day and is leading the brand into its next chapter. CUT marked its 20th anniversary on August 20, 2026, with The World of CUT, a seven-course dinner cooked by the executive chefs of every Cut location. The day before, Haute Living sat down with father and son to talk about its beginnings, their go-to orders and why keeping CUT a family business has been the key to its success.

HAUTE LIVING: Byron, you were 11 when CUT opened. What is it like to mark this milestone working alongside your father?

Byron Lazaroff-Puck: Working that closely with my father every day is the greatest pleasure of my life. I grew up with the same passion and love for this industry that he has. At the same time, I got the greatest mentor you could possibly ask for, and he had a few great ones himself. Having that mentor be your own father is otherworldly, and I count it as the biggest blessing I could possibly have.

HL: Chef, take us back to the beginning. How did CUT come about?

Wolfgang Puck: The Beverly Wilshire had a restaurant there, run by the hotel, and the manager came to me and said, “Wolfgang, why don’t you take over that space and do something?” I said, “Well, it’s so close to Spago, I don’t really know.” If I made a cheaper restaurant, our guests might go there for dinner instead. The space was maybe too big to make it more expensive. Then my team pushed me into it, really. They said, “You should do steak. You make the best steaks. Why not open a steak restaurant?” I said, “I don’t know, it might be boring.” But finally, we decided to do it.

HL: How did Richard Meier become part of the story?

Wolfgang Puck: I was friends with Richard, and I still am today. He has done a lot here in L.A., and a museum in Atlanta. He was my neighbor, and I used to play tennis with him. So I asked him, “Can you make a restaurant?” He said, “Why not?” I took him over to the space. It looked perfectly fine, and the interior designer who had built the old restaurant was so upset when we demolished it. She said, “My restaurant looks so beautiful, and you’re tearing it out.” I said, “Well, I want something different.” I didn’t want another steakhouse like the many that already existed, and Richard really has his own style. I told him we had to have a restaurant where we cook the steaks a certain way and serve them a certain way, with interesting appetizers, interesting desserts and side dishes. The steak has to be perfect, and we serve different sauces with it. Today, every steak restaurant that opens uses a little bit of our formula, to have more than just iceberg lettuce or tomato and onions. We worked on the menu for a while, and it became a huge success. CUT travels really well, from London to Singapore, to Abu Dhabi, and more to come, because people still love meat a lot. I think CUT is a modern version of the steakhouse, and a great American restaurant.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Four Seasons

HL: What sets the cooking apart?

Wolfgang Puck: We’re one of the only steak restaurants that doesn’t just broil the steaks. We have a wood-burning grill, so the steaks get more of a barbecued, smoky flavor, which I really love. Take our creamed spinach. I grew up really poor in Austria. We had meat maybe once a week, on Sunday. For lunch, we ate creamed spinach with a fried egg on top. Guess what? That’s one of our favorite side dishes today, and it’s still on the menu after 20 years. The way we make the magic potatoes, the way we make the side dishes — if it’s roasted carrots, they might have some Middle Eastern flavors; if it’s a great white asparagus, or whatever it is — I think it’s really different. If you want a real steakhouse experience in a more up-to-date way, I think CUT is the place to go.

HL: Byron, how has CUT changed over 20 years?

Byron Lazaroff-Puck: CUT may have started as the idea of a modern American steakhouse. Its evolution has been toward a modern American steak restaurant. Yes, the primary focus is cuts of steak, but we go just as far to source amazing poultry and amazing fish. More than anything, CUT is about precision. It doesn’t just come down to cuts of protein; it’s how we treat our vegetables, our fruit and all our produce, how we break it down, how we cook it and the techniques behind it, all built to elevate the ingredient on the plate. I’m so pleased the brand has had so much impact that you see its ethos in restaurants across the culinary world, not just domestically but internationally as well. Cut has evolved into a restaurant that shows a steakhouse can truly be so much more.

HL: And the next 20 years?

Byron Lazaroff-Puck: We want to bolster that legacy. Cut is a story of evolution, and that will continue through precision in the front and the back of the house. We’re also bringing that idea internationally. As my dad mentioned, our next Cut outpost will soon be in Abu Dhabi, and a modern American steak restaurant isn’t something that’s too prevalent in that market. Bringing Cut to new markets lets us bring Wolfgang Puck–style hospitality to every walk of life and, hopefully, each and every city globally.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Four Seasons

HL: What’s your go-to order at CUT?

Wolfgang Puck: When I go with my wife, Gelila, we start with three or four appetizers. I still love the bone marrow flan. It has been on the menu since the beginning, and it’s a unique dish. Then maybe the raw fish or the sashimi from Drew Rosenberg, the Executive Chef at the Beverly Hills location, and the seasonal salads everybody loves: the beet salad in the winter, the tomato salad in the summer. If we have black bass, Drew does a phenomenal job with it, so we share half a black bass and one Snake River New York steak, maybe a 10-ounce, for two. That’s plenty to eat. I don’t eat big steaks. I like small and quality. And naturally I love sweets, so to me, finishing with a delicious chocolate soufflé is the best.

Byron Lazaroff-Puck: I also have a strong penchant for the bone marrow flan. I’ve been eating it for ages and fell in love with it very early on. It’s such a unique and phenomenal dish. For mains, CUT is a great restaurant to come to with family or friends and share. If you want to learn about beef, we have a New York flight with American, Japanese and Australian cuts on the same plate, so you can taste the difference between Japanese Wagyu, American Black Angus and the hybrid of the two in Australian beef. With a group, I love our large-format cuts from Snake River Farms, which we think are truly the best of the best in America right now. Order the tomahawk medium rare with a sauce flight: our classic proprietary CUT steak sauce, red and green chimichurri and a few different mustards. It’s a very large cut of beef, so you’re going to need to share it. It’s a very inviting and welcoming experience for the steak lover.

HL: Each CUT location has its own local touch. Why does that matter to you?

Byron Lazaroff-Puck: We believe in both standardization and localization. You’ll always find the classics that make you think of CUT. But in Beverly Hills, we’re getting amazing black bass right now. At the Rosewood in Washington, D.C., we’re doing a local rockfish. In Singapore or Bahrain, local seasonings and ingredients find their way onto the menu. That lets us support local farmers, producers, and livestock raisers. My dad has an adage that has stood the test of time: if you invest in your local community, your local community will invest in you.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Four Seasons

HL: Can you pinpoint the secret to CUT’S success?

Byron Lazaroff-Puck: It comes down to people who share a consistent North Star. We love to cook, but most importantly, we love to be of service and to create memories for people. That comes down to hiring, training and educating the right people. My dad and I can’t be in Singapore or Bahrain every night. We have chefs, GMs, servers and bussers who have been with the company for 10, 20, 30 years, and they give us that consistency. For me, the secret sauce is as simple as the word “people”: finding the right people who share your passion.

Wolfgang Puck: I think Byron said it all; it is about the people. We are in the hospitality business. It’s not just the food; it’s how we make people feel at the end of the day. Steakhouses, CUT or any other one, are generally fairly expensive. It’s not a cheap meal. So people want to go home feeling really good and say, “Wow, I had the best steak, I had the best chocolate soufflé.” We are here to make people feel good, and to do that, it takes a whole team. It’s just like an orchestra: if one part plays off-key, the piece of music doesn’t sound the same. At CUT, we all have to play on the same team and do what really makes a customer feel good and come back. I think that’s why we are successful. We are interested in the community, and the community gets interested in us. We are a local restaurant. Even in a grand, fancy hotel like a Four Seasons, where hotel guests obviously come too, mainly we have local people who have been coming for 20 years, once or twice a month, or just for a special celebration. I was there the other day, and somebody said, “You know, I have pictures from my birthday here.” Those pictures may be in a special place in their house. And then you have people who come all the time.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Four Seasons

HL: Looking back, is there one piece of advice you wish you could give your younger self, starting Cut 20 years ago?

Wolfgang Puck: We always learn when we make mistakes; success doesn’t teach you as much. When we start a restaurant, it’s an evolution. If something doesn’t work well, we don’t have to go through some corporate ladder to take it off the menu or put something on. We say, “OK, let’s taste it, let’s do it,” and it goes on the menu. It’s very simple, very clear, and very direct. People can call Byron or me and say, “What do you think about that?” We go, we taste it, and that’s it. In a hotel, a chef cannot change the menu, because he has to go to the food and beverage manager, who might have to go to the general manager, who may have to bring it up to corporate. It gets so complicated, and by the end it’s all watered down, and somebody somewhere in an office building decides. We keep it simple. We run it as a family business.

HL: That family element is rare in this industry.

Wolfgang Puck: I’m so happy having Byron. How could I have found anybody better to be in business with than my own son, and to see his passion, his excitement and his commitment? That’s a really special thing, and you don’t see it often. The father or the mother pushes the kid into doing what they do, and the kid doesn’t want to do it: “I’m not going to work Saturday night.” There’s too much cooking at home, so they go into finance, or the total opposite way.

Twenty years in, it’s easy to see why CUT has lasted. The dishes that defined its opening menu are still on it, and the man who created them still tastes every change himself. With Byron Lazaroff-Puck leading the brand toward Abu Dhabi and beyond, CUT remains what it was on opening night: a family restaurant, run by a family.