On the Front Lines with José Andrés

This is your first bottle. I'm sorry, but these seven ft in Europe, yes, at night, but it's also you know, in in Japan, it's early tomorrow morning, early in the middle of Jose Andre's is one of the most revered chefs in the United States. He runs an empire of more than thirty restaurants. He threw his passion and energy into creating the World Central Kitchen in two thousand and ten to feed the hungry, and has fed millions of

people around the world. I and many others consider him a national treasure, and I am so happy to have him here on my podcast. Welcome Jose, Thank you. And Jose has just gotten back from I guess the last the last it was Hurricane Ian and you were down in Pine Island, and what did you find there when you went well. Unfortunately, is the same destruction that we see after every hurricane. This was difficult hurricane season because we had to back to back and both normally unfortunately Florida,

but many other countries in the Caribbean. Fiona followed by Ian. It's a mayhem and I always said we need to be ready. So we had teams Wolan getting very much in five countries, including in the United States, Puerto Rico and Florida around for Mayor. But this is the situation we were bolting with to be very quick next to the people. Um. Fortunately, this hurricane seems to keep happening, and the good thing is that when you are next

to the people, reconstruction can always start quicker, faster. We provide relief faster, people can hope for a better tomorrow. Well, when disaster strikes, How do you know when it's time for you to make an appearance with your millions of meals, your your fantastic staff of volunteers, how do you know? Well, for me, obviously, I'm I'm I'm very proud, yes to

be the founder. But this organization only exists because he's hundreds of thousands of people that think like me and I think like them, so myself obviously, I always try to make myself available. My wife is the one that always has my backpack ready. We don't even talk the

backpackage ready. When he's very massive. When every hand counts is when I usually show up because it's also where I have probably the most experience um smaller events, even every every mill count We have so many good people right now that it's a joy to see how poor records are able to debate the local pol ricans to do it myself when I see something it's really major

that can use my experience. I love to join the teams that w Wasn't Drugen like one more volunteer and get on my own missions uh and try and used to provide relief as quick as we can. Well, just yesterday I read about the terrible floods in Nigeria. We are very maximized and in the area. Probably as we are speaking, some of the teams of Wozn't Drugen are looking into it already, or maybe somebody's flying there. But remember that worn't Druggen we are. The organization has less

than eighty people on Peru. Sometimes we're able to grow two hundreds or even thousands, like Ukraine that we put more than three four thousand Ukrainians in the word Central Kitchen team doing more than hundred seven million meals. But we are trying to grow because this keeps happening. I can tell you that in Venezuela it's been also a huge flooding in the last few days and we had teams on the ground within hours. So every day, more

and more we try to be everywhere. But the world is a very big place that unfortunately climate change is really having an impact, and more and more things are happening, So we're trying to grow to be there in every one of these events when there is a storm or there is some natural flood or crazy whether do you follow where FEMA goes or do you make your own call. We make our own calls with the teams of Walzano Kitchen. Obviously every single hurricane in America were present, and in

major fire we are present. Tornadoes were present. The team members of us the kitchen, they you you get it inside, you get the instinct. Hurricane is obviously obviously we tried to be before the hurricane hits. So it's a very interesting moment because the teams. They have to position themselves in a place they were safe, but at the same time in a place that we can't respond very quickly. So did you do that for the west coast of Florida?

Oh yeah, we had that. And yet the government of Florida, even the governor of Florida, did not make it imperative that people get out of the way of Ian Sometimes sometimes they have enough difficulty. Was trying to do what we do ourselves at Walsandra Guichen too, to try to be more a critic of of what other governors do of Fima. This was a very complicated hurricane, I will say, because for many days, even a week, ten days before.

Remember some of these hurricanes they form in the Atlantic and they start moving slowly, there are a tropical depression, and you don't know if they're gonna become a hurricane. And then everybody knew that was going to be having a very different cool um path and nobody was going to be very sure where was going to end. We were even thinking a good goal all the way to the Panhandle. It's a lot of territory. So what do

you do? That's the call? Do you tell everybody in the coast lines all across the Gulf of Mexico to move away. Um. But what I would say that we would have been good too, because there were a lot of people. Over a hundred people died and people mostly elderly people who couldn't get out. But we need to have, if anything, we have the technology, we have the ways that we need to put that the service of the people. That technology for goodness and that will mean for tsunamis

that will mean for an earthquake, Um, fortunate. It is very hard to to know when it's gonna ahead. But yes, what people can do after, but especially hurricane we need to do maybe better in in in in something the red the red flag and the alarm to say please live right now. The issue is that depends where you are wrote bridges. Sometimes it's very narrow the escape routes and becomes very very complex. That the difficult thing is

do we tell everybody to escape? And all the time we have with the hurricane arriving thousands of cars in the middle of the road, what people do with the boats becomes super super complex. So did you do a Senter Belle wells Annibal. A lot of when we landed there the homes. There are bigger constructions, better constructions. I think it's more a second home kind of island. But

there were people stranded where where where people stranded. But obviously I will say everybody, one person that suffers is one too many. But I will say the place we saw more and more and more people that was obviously Pine Island. But this happened also for me that a lot of people decide for my beach, a lot of people stay, and this was a bad call. But again it's only one two ways in an out of forms beach.

When when the alarm is non, dosn't somebody quickly? Is always too late because sometimes it's even more than yours to be on the boat trying to cross the bridge as the hurricane arrives and maybe staying in your home again. Hurricanes, they are highly unpredictable. This one was one of the

most unpredictable hurricanes. And we've been able to follow and everybody was expecting Saint Petersburg and Tampa, and you saw this made the very big right, the very big going east, and a lot of the sudden people were unprepared and that's why we saw so many deaths. And now just get all the subject of disaster and get on with food. Jose Is was first known here in the United States as a Spanish chef with a pension for knowing what the public really loved to eat. And you started some

amazing restaurants. You have restaurants in New York, you have restaurants in Washington, d C. You have restaurants in Los Angeles. Ron Howard did a fantastic documentary on you called We Feed People. And so it's not just restaurants, but of course your World Central Kitchen and UH. In two thousand and ten, after being a very successful restaurateur, and you could have just continued to open restaurants, you decided to start World Central Kitchen. So you had already responded to

natural disasters before that. But why did you feel the need that you, as a person an individual, should start such an organization which would have such a major impact in areas of disaster. But I had to go back to probably you know, my mom my dad were nurses, and they always were great nurses, and they were always great influence on me and their friends and me going to hospitals often because because I went very often UH to to see them on waiting for them to take

me home. And I always saw the amazing people and nurses and doctors and everybody that works in a hospital because they you always see they got the extra mile. Obviously, my father loved to cook, my mom too. Everybody will always be working home in the table or my father will be cooking. Big bias, always very generous in this sense. We could be then we could be fifty. That's a matter. My father always will find a way to feed everybody.

Moving into the stage was important for me, especially because it's when I joined our organization could share our strength created by Bill Short and his sister Debbie, and sure strength is the way I began use sharing what I knew about cooking with people that could learn how to cook, maximize the dollars they had they were poor, to buy a smarter and then make nutritious meals to their families. Very quickly I joined. Also this is Central Kitchen, I

met Robert Eger. This is inter Kitchen was great. It was a super kitchen, but like no other, was not only used solving the problem uh feeding the hungry, but I was taking people out of jail, people out of the streets, training them to be cooks in the process, making sure that food waste will not happen, bringing food from farmers and maybe hotels that had a big party council, making sure that that food will be served somewhere else. All of the sudden, training those men becoming cooks, that

restaurants like me could be higher. You see all of the sudden. I saw a plate of food, building community, giving opportunity to people, finding food waste, training and finding then the way to fit the homeless population in this year. At the same time that people were training on restaurants like me could hire very well prepared people there. I saw the power of food when I saw Katrina. Katrina.

I was in the confront of my home on the Superdome, thousands of Americans inside an arena, and we couldn't feed them and bring them water. Do you know how far away is the main warehouse area that provides food to all the restaurants in New Orleans points seven miles? You could walk with ten twenty people even if you didn't had a car, because the water was up to your belly and bringing the food and start feeding them. We didn't do. You know what an arena is? Everybody has

it wrong. Everybody in arena thinks is a place to watch NBA hockey or watch musicians. No, it's a gigantic restaurant that entertains with the sports and music. That moment, I said, is no way that in these emergencies you send nurses and daughters to tagether the wounded after an emergency, you said, firefighters and rescue teams to look under the

rubble after an earthquake. Who do you think we should be sending to bring water and feed people after an American chefs the people that we feed the field, we are the most prepared people. Two also feed the many. This is why I wasn't a kitchen. As an idea began in En I mean Cayman Island with Eric Rippert and a Tony bor Dan, and within a few days, a couple of weeks later, I went to Haiti with

one idea. You could arre you to help, but they went with the idea to learn how cooks like me, we can activate ourselves and our contacts to start making something out of nothing. This is how you started World Central Kitchen in two thousand and ten. What was the main mission? It was not so clear in the early days that we will be mainly in emergencies even was part of that. For me, it was more emergencies with

helping also with development because we had many areas. One was education to the people of Haiti needed school like we did to make sure that John John girls lend a profession and they can make a living in the process of of working in restaurants, and so we did kind of a school. Also, we were saying that in Haiti everybody cooks with charcoal and the entire countries has almost no trees compared to the Dominican Republic, the country in the other side of of the same islands that

is a forest. What can we do because being poor means that also you are on how cutting down the natural resources in the way of surviving, you are becoming putter every day. What can we do to make sure that the young girls don't have to go to pick up wood instead of going to school. You see things like this is what we began, But then we had that same year hurricane, and then was was all the events that kept happening. So it's lowly but surely wilsnto

the kitchen yous began growing. But I would say that with the end soever this natural disaster, hurricane after hurricane, but especially I will say the big big year was over five years ago when Maria happened right a few weeks before Houston, also happened Irma or Harvey, if I'm if I'm right, And then it's when we never stopped and we kept going because then every year SAMs was one, two, three hurricanes, not only category one or two, but all the way to four or five. All of the sun

and mayhem was happening everywhere. Kind of we've never stopped cooking. Well, the last time I really spent any time with you was in Puerto Rico and right after that major disaster, I guess, and you were taking us to the farms where he was teaching the farmers what to grow so that when disaster did strike, they would have food to put on their tables. And that was such an eye opener to me. I really enjoyed seeing those farms, those special crops that you were encouraging them to grow and

it made a difference to them. Well, I always amazing that you came because obviously everybody think like when one region when estate, when Cilia has been hit by a hurricane, it's kind of you cross that on your list. And I always want to tell people when they tell me, Jose, what can I do? Show up because people need you to show up in the weeks a month once everything is safe, so that you Martha came to Doorado and busy.

Different part supper Ricourse so important obviously because people follow you on your podcast, on your Instagram, on your Twitter and everywhere else, and somebody like you showing up there for vacation was saying this is the way to help too. Indirectly. You can go and have a great time, but in the process you are living tourish dollars in the way

you're moving the economy forward. So this was great. It was the UH in Puerto Rico a few weeks ago, right after the last Hurricane Fiona, the damage Puerto Rico again, your whole, your whole power grid went out, and we and we busy many of these same farms you're talking. We kind of hard partnership with more than close to two hundred twenty farms that what we did was giving them grants, but grants that were smart investments in precisely

make them resilient in the event of future hurricanes. And we began buying a lot of the fruits and vegetables that we were serving to the people after this hurricane. We were buying from our same partners. The way, in the process of the emergency, you are already helping the local economy. Economy. Yes, so that's it's so smart and it makes such sense, and yet so little of this is being done without josyandres not true. It happens with

a lot of people. We are not overli in the States, I will say, we are, without a doubt, the biggest feeding operation. This is the type of things I'm asking FEMA and Homeland Security and the r c S. Always you see every precedent or every governor or every major announcing that food will be available. Well, the food is available is always what we call the emory is the meal is ready to eat. The meal is ready to eat.

There's nothing wrong with them. They are food that is already pretty cooked that you opened the box, you can't even have a way to heat it, and you eat it. Listen, you, I feed them worse things in my life, probably every one of us. Maybe it's something worse, but those meals ready to eat. This is what happened. Somebody drops them one day, usually the great man and woman of the National Guard. They follow orders. They dropped them somewhere, maybe

in a fire station. The fire station guys, poor guys, they're busy rescuing people. They have other issues. They're not in the business of this with in food. And let me tell you, very often when I go somewhere and I see a big load of emories, I love to go back to three for one month later, and usually those emories are in touched is still there. We spend the money, we spend the resources. They don't help the local economy. They are not the favorite thing for people

to eat. And they spoil um. Well, technically that's the good thing of memories that they never spoil that horrible they so a hundred years later, maybe those emories somebody will be able to eat them. But that's why sometimes for elderly people they're not the right thing to eat. For a lot of people with health issues, is not the right thing to do. But let me tell you what better than you use helping the local economy by supporting the local restaurants and food trucks. That this is

more than just putting money. People want to be active in an emergency helping their own community is always hands available to help. We show that we give an opportunity to people to take the mission of taking care of their fellow citizens on their own hands. And that's what we are. Such an easy organization to love because everybody feels can always be part of helping. How was that occasion is able to do what we do because mainly

American people supporters. Ninety nine point nine percent of all our funds are used from individuals, uh seven percent, foundations, some businesses. We don't hundred millions of me. I think we are maybe three four hundred maybe four hundred million mills. I don't know, because quite frankly, I don't keep count. But in the pandemic was huge because we were not only in America. We were in Spain, we were in India, we were in other in other few countries. But in

America we had a huge activation. I think at one moment we were over for his seven states. We were very big in all the hospitals in New York, we were big in Oakland, we were big in l A. We were in so many places. Why because hospitals were shutting the kitchens. Nobody was coming to work did your family get to see you and those Yeah, he spent good time with my family, but also it troubled a lot.

But but remember we began feeding people in Yokohama in late January early February with the help of Noble who he put a lot of his contacts there in Yokohama, Japan, because the first ship with copy was coming, second one was coming to Oakland. There we were two and when we left Oakland after feeding that cruise ship with copy cases, we knew that this was going to be the pandemic

everybody was talking about. We began use growing three thousand, five hundred restaurants that became part of our network, some arenas, some stadiums that also became part of our network before we knew we were in India, and with catering, it was an incredible mobile station. It was incredible. People are so grateful for your help, really and truly. But you did win this amazing award from Jeff Bezos for his

it's called the Courage and Civilization Award. So you are you are going to use that for investing in the future. We obviously I've already use some of those fonds. You could argue aide and use them in one hour when there is so much younger, yes, and so many issues. Obviously, UM, my good friend. Yet Bess, I'm already telling him, well, the hundred is great. Can we talk about the next hundred or on the next billion. What I can tell you is that Jeff has a very good heart. Uh,

he's very active in in a lot of situations. Right at the beginning of the pandemic, he gave another hundred million to UH to the Feeding America, which is the networks of food banks. But in what I've used somehow that money, the initial money I've been using for investments in things like a food institute, idea one day in Washington the sea where we need to be having a place that will create food policy for American food and

national food around around the world. You know, I've been I've been reading a lot about that and talking about that. To finally, I mean, America, a huge country, has no national food agency. We we have right now I think close to seventeen agencies with more than a hundred offices that they handled different experts of the government related to food.

And they don't and they don't speak between them. So myself, as you know was the White House Food Conference, first one in fifty three years and I was able to to to speak. They give me the opportunity to be but there is going to be a meeting. I hear the meeting already happened. The White House Food Conference already happened. It wasn't successful. I would say that we need to wait and see. The last one happened in nine with

President Nixon. Many things like we know today Week which helped s naps, different programs that have mothers, elderly families that they don't make it at the end of the month. This is a suppleman for them to be able to feed themselves. Many of these things happen in nineteen sixty nine. So those were the good news. The bad news is that more than fifty three years we never had another

White House Food Conference. And many of the old ideas they didn't they didn't move forward, they didn't catch on fire, and they didn't well, they work, but they didn't adapt. You cannot put the same idea that you create fifty years ago today this way House Food Conference. This is what we hope that new ideas are going to happen, that maybe breakfast and lunch will become universal in America. Maybe that we will stop throwing money of the problem

and we will start investing in dissolutions. Children should be fed better in America. The government, the American government has enough money to achieve that. And in the process, you can keep farmers doing well, buying from rural America and reaching rural America, making sure that the rural America becomes richer, no poorer. So you've seen so much of the world, can you tell us which parts are the most needy? Well,

I'm for doing it. I will tell you I've been in a lot of parts of the world like you, but I don't think I've been in the in the ones that maybe needs people like me and you to show up. All right, now, we are listening what's happening, and if you hope, again, we're seeing what's happening in German again. We're seeing what's happening in Palestine again. We're seeing what's happened sometimes in our own cities in America, Martha, sometimes unfortunately we don't need to go so far away.

But there is this war happening in Ukraine. Ukraine is a net exporter of grains. Uh. This is putting a lot of pressure in countries that they depend on those grains to feed their population, and all of the sudden, this is the issue in the conundrum. We maybe, as much as I like to be a positive person, we may be in four in one of the biggest humanitarian crisis where we're gonna be having hundreds of thousands, millions of women, children living their countries, living their cities because

it's nothing to it. And when people don't have anything to it is when they start thinking about migrating. Of course, what would you not do if you had to feed your child? So we canna do two things. We canna be talking about building walls in America in Europe, but let me tell you, or we canna be talking about building longer tables, making sure that those countries have stronger democracies, that they economically they do better, that they are able

to feed themselves. I do believe the rich wall needs to be invested in the betterment of the lives of the potter part of the wall, because if you build the wall, let me tell you that wall is useless because the most powerful army there is will be on the army of mothers with their children in their arms. Your podcast that you have started is called Longer Tables, and I like that analogy because it really does make us think about coping with this problem and solving the

problem if we can. And your passion is just infectious because now I'm I just I'm feeling so positive about the help that we can really give to all these people and places and need. Well, we need to do to change the way our politicians are trying to do every everyday business. Seems that we keep repeating the same old recipes that they have no problem with all recipes. I love history, I love all recipes. But when the old recipe doesn't work, Martha, what do you do? You

change their recipe? You improve the recipe. If the old recipes are not helping end many of the problems we face, let's throw them away and let's make better ones or right new recipes. But right now, Joanne has to rembent themselves. Unit have has to rembent themselves. World Food Program has to rembent themselves. Organizations like Red Cross and film that

they need to rembent themselves. Why because the world and humanity cannot afford for those organizations to don't do and show up with the best that they can give to the people. If those organizations fell, humanity felts, they need all of them, all of us rewrite new recipes because sometimes they all recipes are not working. When do you find time to cook? Well, I just it was very, very,

very entire. I don't know why, but I arrived home and um my wife and I wanted to see a movie a series, and I had some seurge in about from Maine. I kind of cleaned them in the morning, and I arrived and I made for her a quick pastor. It's urgin target. So it's always common to cook. Where are you getting good the target these days? The base one? Obviously, Spain will claim this from Spain we call it. They call it in Italy. You can find it in powder form.

You can find it like it was a sausage. But I used to get really good Italian rotariga from the island of Sarginia. Could be But you know, I'm not never in the business of recognizing Italians have anything better than Spain. Sorry, it's on my the mullet card row from the grandmllet. Yeah, but I have one that is no Italy of Spain where the one I've been using for more than twenty years, life changing from where tricklins from Greece comes in a very sexy code of be wax.

When you cut it and you see it through the light bulb colors through the sun amber color, it's a beautiful you know orange in the fall sun said seven p m. Yes, that beautiful orange e color. That is almost telling you eat me. You take the wax out, you bring that beautiful lines of the gray mallet cure sweet is sending a smell through your nose of saying, oh yeah, this came right from the A G and C right in the Mediterranean, by the course of Greece.

And it's like eat me, and you put it on the tongue, and even the tongue doesn't want to eat it. The teeth doesn't want to bite into it. They don't want to damage that precious, amazing bite of heaven. When your teeth and your tongue don't want to eat something, you kind of minding how good it is. Almost are going to look for that? Are you selling that at

your store? I have it in my restaurants Titania, which the first one I opened to any years ago in Washington dizzy and now, yes, people, this is a commercial. I opened one at the rich Carton. No, man, is that the I have it there you do, I'm going there tonight. I've got that tricklinos D the best color Targa, the best raw dry raw in the kind putting, okay, I'm going I have no business with them. I should I have, so I don't mind to use that. You

can find it online. Is life changing. It is life changing. I think it was a seal. You and I we were seals in another live So your wife was very happy with her general last night? Yep. And what movie did you watch? I watched the first episode of The Bird? Oh? It was it good? It was it was great. The about the restaurant in Chicago and the bear, the bird. What happened? You don't understand my English? No many years. What did you think about the bird? The bird? Come on?

Hell so in the Spanish everything, but when you sound you what did you think the first episode? I love it. My wife she didn't love it, but I convinced her to watch the second one and then she wore moum. My daughter. My daughter loved it and I I got so turned off at the at the filthiness of that kitchen. But the guy was cleaning all the time. He wasn't making I would have put everybody out on the street and taken a power washer and clean that place in

two hours. Believe me, I would have. I was there. I just went I got so mad at that show. But it was fun, it was the acting was great. These people, these men, the SUSA, the woman, everybody. He's trying to show the best of themselves against a lot. I just love your passion, I love your excitement. I think that you are one of the most incredible human

beings alive today. Jose Andres. You are doing so much good, um and you are teaching so many people to be more humanitarian, to be more caring, to be more aware of the major major problems that we're all facing. And I hope all of you listening will look up World Central Kitchen, UM and UH and help Jose and his crusade to feed the world. Are we opening up what little wine know? What