What Celebrities Finally Got to Eat After the Oscars' Best Picture Fiasco

While the cast of La La Land may have been disappointed after last night's 89th Academy Awards, at least they had an incredible meal to lift them up afterwards. That was thanks to LA chef icon Wolfgang Puck and his orchestration of the Governors Ball, the official afterparty for the Oscars. Putting together food for a 1,600-person dinner party (not to mention staff meal for 2,000 employees) is no small effort, but Puck has been doing it for more than two decades.

"It's really not that difficult if you know what to do, and we have so many good chefs it makes it easy for me. And so many good chefs who are with me for many years," Puck said on a plush red banquette in the Governors Ball Champagne Lounge. "They know what we want, they know our culture. I'm not saying it's easy, but obviously we are doing it for 23 years, so we have the organization down to a point."

In previous years, the Governors Ball was a sit-down dinner that eventually lost its luster.

"It was a boring dinner because you had to sit with people you didn't want to sit with," Puck said. "Now we keep it open, have it more like a party, so that way people who come can sit with their friends, mingle around."

The newer format is still an incredible feat. Puck brings in chefs from all of his LA restaurants and staff from around the country. That experienced manpower helps Puck achieve a crucial goal of the event.

"What we really want to do is when people come to the dinner, they feel like they're at Spago or CUT or the Bel-Air Hotel having a first-class dinner."

The Governors Ball menu does indeed give Hollywood's elite a taste of Puck's repertoire. The night features signature dishes like his smoked salmon pizza, and spicy tuna tartare in a sesame miso cone. Outside of old favorites, there were new dishes on debut from Eric Klein, the new executive chef of Wolfgang Puck Catering, like Korean steak tartare on puffed rice.

At 1:30 PM, the vibe in the kitchen was buzzy and light. People were cracking jokes, smiling, chatting. People were chopping up broccoli in one room of the sprawling kitchen and blanching it in another. Everyone seemed to be very content toiling away at their tasks.

"I think I have to be happy first, I have to be positive first," Puck said about keeping up staff morale. "I am a positive person. So I think to keep everybody on this positive mindset is a really important part. We tell the that this is a very important party for us and our reputation is at stake. We don't want to screw it up."

In another smaller kitchen, the evening's sushi was being prepared. Chef Hiroyuki "Fuji" Fujino from Puck's Dallas restaurant, Five Sixty, was flown in to oversee the effort. The air smelled like freshly cooked sushi rice. During the Governors Ball, he will serve sashimi to order from a raw bar made of solid ice.

As the day progressed, the energy continued to rise. Back in the main kitchen, ABC Live's red carpet coverage played on a flat screen TV. A seemingly endless number of cake pops were being assembled. The staff never stopped organizing and cleaning their stations.

"For pastry-wise, the chocolate Oscars start getting made a month in advance. Everything else, definitely few weeks in advance," said said pastry cook Carissa Matson about the prep process. This was her third year working the event. "It's quieter in here than I feel like it normally is, but that might get worse as time goes on."

Around 5:30, Ryan Seacrest stopped by the kitchen to hang out with Puck. The two are buds, and together they sample some of the night's goods. "He loooooooves black truffle," a publicist said about Seacrest. Puck proceeded to shave a heaping pile of Burgundy truffle into Seacrest's bowl. Fifteen pounds of truffle had been flown in for the occasion.

There were plenty of opportunities for guests to savor those truffles. The kitchen was making chicken pot pie with shaved black truffles, mac and cheese with shaved black truffle, agnolotti pasta with shaved back truffle. You get the point.

By the pizza oven, cooks were busy prepping pies. Ozzie Cardenas guessed he had made about 260 pizzas since he had arrived at 6:30 that morning. He'd be manning the station until 11:30 that night. He wouldn't be eating any 'za, though.

"I stopped eating pizza a long time ago," he said.

At 8:30, the entire kitchen and service staff gathered in the ballroom to take a group photo. It's a tough shot to organize with so many people, but the photographer managed to wrangle them all together. Everyone got back into the kitchen for the final push before service. Puck grazed on bits and pieces from various stations, favoring scoops of caviar like any caviar-loving human would.

At that point there seemed to be caviar everywhere. The stations needed a fuck ton of the stuff. They'd be serving heaping globs of it atop baked potatoes later, one of the most popular items on the menu.

Puck kept watching the TV broadcast. Once the Best Director was announced, it was show time for the kitchen. The energy rose to an organized frenzy. Service staff milled around, going over their lineup notes.

"Guys, we're on Best Picture, we're on Best Picture," a cook said at 9:06 PM.

When La La Land won, then Moonlight won, the kitchen crowd halted in a shocked confusion.

"What the fuck," Puck said.

"No matter what we do tonight, we'll be OK," a cook said.

People started shushing each other at 9:17. The night erupted into full-blown service mode, but Puck insisted on the team staying quiet throughout the ordeal. At 9:35, Puck called for the potatoes. The chef team pounced on the golden foiled potatoes, dousing them in their dressings. Whenever an expo was finished arranging the potatoes on a tray, he or she would hold up a hand and call for a server to take the spuds away.

The rest of the food started to flow out of the kitchen. There was pizza, pasta, soup, wagyu. The army of service staff rotated in and out of multiple doors, some in formal cream jackets and some in all-black.

"Hold the tray straight. Please, hold on," Klein said to a wobbling server.

Outside of the kitchen, guests had made their way from the Dolby Theater to the ballroom. Actor Michael Shannon noshed on a ramekin of carbs and truffles. Samuel L. Jackson looked cool as hell just being himself. Nicole Kidman attracted an orbit of people around her, presumably from her glowing smile alone. In a quiet corner, Charlize Theron sat with Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty. Who knows what they were talking about.

"OK, where's the sushi?" a guest asked a server holding a dessert tray.

Lucky for the guest, there plenty of sushi easily in reach. It was great, too—just the way Puck had planned.