LOS ANGELES—This time last year, Wolfgang Puck Catering was gearing up to cater the Oscars’ glamorous after-party for the 26th consecutive year. And, well, we all know what happened next: Less than a month after the show, the COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread event cancellations that continue to this day.

So you can forgive us for getting a bit emotional during last night’s HBO Max debut of The Event, a new four-part docuseries that follows celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck and his team as they handle some of Southern California’s most high-profile gatherings. The series offers an inside look at what it took to cater everything from the SAG Awards to the massive Upfront Summit for venture capitalists. Here are some of our favorite moments from the premiere episode.

1. The glimpse inside the planning of the 2020 SAG Awards
The premiere episode follows members of the Wolfgang Puck Catering (WPC) team as they work on last January’s SAG Awards from start to finish. We see some initial planning meetings, menu trial and error and the hustle of event day—which included catering both the 1,280-guest televised award ceremony as well as the after-party. “It doesn’t matter if we’re cooking for 10 people at home or 1,300 people at the SAG Awards, it’s always done the same way,” says the team’s chef Markus at one point in the episode.

There are also fun interviews with SAG Awards executive producer Kathy Connell, who discusses how the team transforms the 100-year-old Shrine Auditorium into an intimate, glamorous space, as well as event designer Tony Schubert of Event Eleven and florist Chris Matsumoto of CJ Matsumoto & Sons. We loved seeing so many familiar faces get the spotlight!

2. “No is not in our vocabulary.”
That statement, which is undoubtedly familiar to anyone in the event industry, is said by WPC vice president of catering sales Barbara Brass after getting a last-minute call regarding the seemingly impossible: The SAG Awards wants to go 100% vegan, in keeping with a popular 2020 award-season trend sparked, in part, by actor Joaquin Phoenix. The team discusses how frequently curveballs like that come from clients—and how they’ve learned to roll with the punches. Vice president of culinary Eric Klein, of course, barely bats an eye when asked to recreate the entire menu.The vegan trend continued at the Oscars’ official after-party in February 2020, where Puck and his team created a menu that was 70% plant-based. Their dishes included vegetable rice paper rolls (pictured). See more: Oscars 2020: Steal-Worthy Event Design Ideas From the Week’s Most Stylish PartiesPhoto: Courtesy of Wolfgang Puck Catering

3. The plating process
At one point Klein compares a finished plate to a painting (“We eat with our eyes,” he says), and boy, do we see that in action in a scene where the chefs struggle to display the new vegan entree in an appetizing way—that can also be recreated 1,280 times. “It looks like a drunk man on top of rice,” says chef Pauline at one point. It’s fun to get a behind-the-scenes look at the controlled chaos of WPC’s massive Hollywood kitchen. (Confession: We’re still a bit starstruck after Puck himself gave us a Facebook Live tour of the kitchen in 2018 as the team prepped for the Oscars.)

4. VIP concierge Ramon Leon describing the SAG Awards as “the beginning of fashion week”
Anyone who has survived award season in Los Angeles—that two-month stretch with the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Grammys and more, along with hundreds of star-studded parties—can relate. 

5. A backstage look at the night of the event
Was anyone else holding their breath as servers rushed to clear plates and drink orders during the ceremony’s two-minute commercial breaks? Brass called it “ninja service,” and there’s really no other way to describe it. HBO Max’s cameras follow the chefs, butlers and other staffers as they kept A-list guests like Brad Pitt fed and happy during the seated dinner and buzzy after-party. Even with some hiccups along the way, “No matter what happens, the client [and] the guests will never know,” notes chef Markus during the episode.The 2020 SAG Awards after-party had a “cherry blossom forest” theme. See more: See the SAG Awards’ Cherry Blossom-Filled After-PartyPhoto: Line 8 Photography. All rights reserved.

6. Watching Wolfgang Puck schmooze with celebrities
Seeing celebrities like Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, Christian Bale and Henry Winkler casually chat with the always-entertaining chef was a treat. At one point, Puck even hand-makes a custom vegan pizza for Leonardo DiCaprio in the middle of the event. How’s that for hands-on service? 

7. “The most important thing in life, whatever you do, has to be passion.”
That quote from Puck kicked off the episode; it’s clearly a staple of the WPC culture, and couldn’t be more relatable to event professionals of all types—particularly after the year they just survived. 

Episode two of The Event follows the team’s catering efforts for the Upfront Summit, a massive, two-day business conference from Upfront Ventures that took over the Rose Bowl in January 2020. That, plus episodes following the Westworld season 3 premiere party in Hollywood and the BNP Paribas Classic tennis tournament in Indian Wells, Calif., are available now on HBO Max. We know what we’ll be binging this weekend!