Chef Wofgang Puck is Ga. aquarium's latest catch
By JIM THARPE
Cox News Service
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
 BEN GRAY/Cox News Service One of two giant whale sharks swims past onlookers as they peer into the Georgia Aquarium's main tank Tuesday.  BEN GRAY/Cox News Service Aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus hams it up with celebrity chef Woflgang Puck, whose company will preside over the aquarium's catering operation. |
ATLANTA — Bernie Marcus has long promised that the Georgia Aquarium would be a feast for the eyes and the intellect. On Tuesday, he invited the taste buds to the banquet.
As the Beatles song "Octopus's Garden" played in the background and two whale sharks swam on the water side of an enormous foot-thick acrylic window, the Home Depot co-founder pulled back the curtains — just a bit — on the biggest fish tank in the United States.
Marcus, who is spending $200 million of his fortune to build the aquarium in downtown Atlanta, gave the public its first up-close glance at Ralph and Norton, the whale sharks for whom the aquarium was designed. And the 76-year-old billionaire announced that he had landed another big fish: celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, whose company will operate catering services at the facility.
"I think this is the new diamond for Atlanta," Puck, in his thick German accent, told the three dozen reporters and photographers at the event. "I think it will be an international destination."
So, will fish be on the menu? Certainly, said the creator of Spago Hollywood. But the catering staff will participate in the Seafood Watch program pioneered by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The program encourages consuming only seafood from sustainable sources.
"We will try to educate people [about] what to buy and what to eat," Puck said.
The 430,000-square-foot aquarium, which opens to the public Nov. 23, will be bigger, and have more fish, than any other facility of its kind in the nation. Located at the north end of Centennial Olympic Park near CNN, the ship-shaped facility will be the only aquarium outside Asia to house whale sharks, gentle filter feeders that can grow to the size of a Greyhound bus.
Ralph and Norton, adolescent males imported from Taiwan, are mere pups by comparison, measuring between 15 and 20 feet long. They are, however, growing with every gulp of krill (small shrimp) they consume. Each fish downs about 17 pounds of food twice a day.
"They're almost like puppies," Marcus said.
Ralph and Norton appeared oblivious to the media commotion and celebrity cooks on the other side of the window Tuesday. The grayish fish with large white dots on their backs glided slowly through their tank — the size of a football field — as photographers pointed a dozen cameras their way through the 10-foot-by-28-foot window that looks out over the aquarium's 17,000-square-foot banquet hall. The room can seat 1,100 people and accommodate 1,800 for a reception.
Marcus used the banquet facility, which can be rented for weddings, corporate events and bar mitzvahs, to give the public its first glimpse of the aquarium's interior. Reporters were not permitted into other areas of the closely guarded facility, which is still under construction. A second window inside the banquet hall remained veiled — it reportedly will give diners a peak into another huge tank holding Beluga whales.
The main portion of the public part of the aquarium was not unveiled.
"I could tell you everything, but I'd have to kill you," quipped Marcus, who has kept most details of the aquarium secret in a calculated effort to maximize buzz prior to the opening.
He introduced Puck as part of his "dining dream team," which also includes Chuck Banicki, who will oversee the 250-seat Cafe Aquaria on the aquarium's atrium level, and Pano Karatassos, founder of the Buckhead Life Restaurant Group, whose restaurant Buckhead Bread will be represented in the food court.
Jim Tharpe writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: jtharpe@ajc.com
