LaDou was working as a chef at several restaurants in San Francisco by the mid-1970s, including at Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too! in San Francisco, and restaurant Ecco in Palo Alto. He gained a reputation as an experimental pizza maker, which often made him popular with his customers, but sometimes clashed with the ideas of the owners of the restaurants in which he worked. LaDou was working at a restaurant called Prego, when he was discovered by chef Wolfgang Puck, who was eating at the restaurant. Puck ordered one of LaDou's pizzas, which was topped with ricotta cheese, red peppers, pâté and mustard and immediately offered him a job at his Spago restaurant in Los Angeles, which at the time was not open yet.
