Chef José Andrés once offered Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a place to stay, when the freshman
politician was starting her career as a congresswoman.
Did she take the chef up on his offer?
Keep watching to find out.
José Andrés' journey toward activism began with a 2010 phone call.
As Andrés told Fast Company, Manolo Vílchez, head of a Spain-based solar-powered-stove
company, was planning a humanitarian trip to Haiti to distribute solar-powered cooking
equipment to citizens in the aftermath of an earthquake, and invited Andrés to join
him.
Over the years, Andrés had volunteered at soup kitchens in Washington, D.C., and even
taught cooking classes in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
So he jumped on the opportunity to help people on a larger scale.
He spent two weeks in Haiti, setting up more than a dozen solar-powered cooking setups
throughout the island and teaching residents how to use them.
When he returned, he met with Robert Egger, head of D.C.
Central Kitchen, a charity that began by taking unused food from D.C. restaurants and feeding
it to the city's homeless.
Andrés proposed setting up an international iteration of the organization.
Andrés' ebullient personality proved invaluable in raising money for this new venture, dubbed
World Central Kitchen.
He was adept at convincing wealthy donors and large corporations to part with their
money for a worthy cause.
"We're going to bring a plate of food to as many people as we can, as quick as we can.
And this is a very simple idea that can never, ever be lost."
After being elected to Congress in November of 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was preparing
to move from her home in Brooklyn to Washington, D.C.
The 29-year-old former bartender spoke with the New York Times about her move, framing
it in the context of income inequality.
As she explained, the transition period was "very unusual," seeing as she couldn't take
a salary.
Hence, the newly elected congresswoman would effectively be without income for three months.
AOC mused to the Times:
"So how do I get an apartment.
Those kind of things are very real."
José Andrés had a solution.
When she issued a tweet in reference to the interview, declaring there was "no reason
to be ashamed and embarrassed" by not having money, the chef responded to her unique circumstances
by extending a characteristically generous offer.
Andrés wrote on twitter:
"Dear Congresswoman: you have a room, a shower, and a plate on my family table for as long
as you may be in need of one."
There were no subsequent reports, however, that she took him up on his invitation.
Food waste is a huge problem in the hospitality industry.
According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 133 billion pounds of available
food went uneaten in 2010.
It's an issue that José Andrés decided to address head-on.
As he explained in an interview with Stop Food Waste Daily, Andrés cited the lessons
he learned from D.C.
Central Kitchen founder Robert Egger, whose organization was founded by accepting donations
of unused food from the city's restaurants and banquets and feeding it to the city's
homeless population.
Andrés took the concept further by working with farmers who supply restaurants and urged
them to donate fruit and vegetables that would be deemed too "imperfect" to serve in a restaurant
and would otherwise be thrown away.
According to Andrés, he and his family try to be mindful of food waste by focusing on
sustainability at the household level, growing their own vegetables and harvesting honey
from backyard beehives.
He also offered some advice for those who want to follow in his footsteps, advising:
"[Do] not throw away any scraps of food on your plates — make them your lunch tomorrow!"
In fact, he declared that some of his most enduring recipes originated as, quote, "yesterday's
meals."
When restaurants were forced to shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, José Andrés
saw an opportunity to provide meals to those who desperately needed them while keeping
some restaurants open and staff employed.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Andrés laid out the ambitious plan he was
implementing through World Central Kitchen's newly launched Chefs for America initiative.
According to Andrés, his organization would pay a restaurant between $10 and $20 per meal,
allowing the eateries to rehire furloughed staff and cover the cost of the food.
Andrés went on to explain that the goal was to roll out the program throughout the country
and get restaurants back to work while also helping communities in need — a win-win
proposition if there ever was one.
"We announced that we will be taking care of all our employees."
As World Chef Kitchen chief executive Nate Mook told the Post, the only way to save restaurants
from going under was to get them back in operation, even if it was in such a non-traditional manner.
Mook told the newspaper:
"The staff going back, getting a paycheck.
The restaurants buying from the suppliers that are also impacted by this.
You got to get the whole machine going again..."
"Food is not the problem.
Food is the solution."
José Andrés made a surprise appearance at the 2018 Academy Awards, and wound up being
met with a standing ovation.
It took place during a musical performance from rapper Common and singer Andra Day, performing
their Oscar-nominated song "Stand Up for Something" from the film Marshall.
As the singers appeared on stage, spotlights shined down on 10 activists who had been personally
invited by Common to join him onstage.
Andrés was one of them, due to his tireless relief efforts in Puerto Rico the previous
year through his World Central Kitchen charity.
At the end of the performance, Andrés memorably unfurled a Puerto Rican flag as the audience
rose to its feet.
In an interview with Variety, Common recalled how he came up with the idea of bringing Andrés
and the other humanitarians onstage for the performance.
The rapper told the outlet:
"I thought, 'What if we got people who really do the work?'
People who are true activists out in the world and on the front line.
People whose lives, whether by circumstance, have become prime movers for change."
A longtime resident of Washington, D.C., José Andrés has rarely been shy about expressing
his political opinions, especially when they involve his humanitarian efforts.
And while he's never publicly expressed any political ambitions, he's admitted that he's
also not willing to entirely close the door on a potential future in politics.
In an interview with Garden & Gun, the chef said,
"You can never say no."
He also revealed that politicians he knew were not thrilled at the prospect of running
against the wildly popular celebrity chef in an election, explaining,
"Some of them have contacted me — 'Are you serious?
Are we going to have to compete with you?'"
Although he wasn't interested in politics at that moment, Andrés believes that every
American, whether he or she holds elected office or not, should be thinking of what
they'd like to achieve if they did have the power to make legislative changes.
Andrés told Garden & Gun:
"We all need to have thoughts about how to make a more perfect Union.
We should all be contributing in a meaningful way.
The world is a much happier place when you contribute."
There are few people on the planet whose knowledge of food can rival that of chef José Andrés,
yet he still believes he has much to learn.
In a 2016 interview with GQ, Andrés said,
"I spend my whole life traveling, eating, milking cows, making cheese, fishing, learning
every aspect, and I still [know nothing]!"
Despite having amassed all that information, he admitted he believes one is never too knowledgeable
— or too old — to stop learning new things, telling GQ,
"I'm still in discovery mode.
I consider myself still young — I'm a 47-year-old walking millennial."
As an example of how much can be learned about things people assume they know all about,
he cited the versatility of what is arguably the most basic ingredient there is: water.
Andrés explained to GQ:
"You can steam it, or you can boil it, or you can freeze it, and you can do different
forms of ices, and forms of frozen, and you can make croquettes, and you can make puff
pastry.
Water allows us to do anything."
The World Central Kitchen has earned a reputation for being able to mobilize immediately in
the event of a natural disaster, which is precisely what happened when Puerto Rico was
devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017.
José Andrés and his nonprofit were also on the ground in the Bahamas in 2019 after
Hurricane Dorian cut a swath of destruction through the Caribbean.
According to American University Radio, World Central Kitchen wound up serving more than
300,000 free meals in the Bahamas.
One key lesson that Andrés has come to learn after responding to multiple disasters over
the years is the importance of arriving at the scene early.
In fact, as he told NPR, he and his team arrived in the Bahamas before the hurricane had entirely
abated, facing heavy rainfall and 80 mph winds.
Andrés told the news outlet:
"We are learning that pre-positioning yourself in a hurricane buys you precious time."
Andrés also added that arriving two or three days after the event is often too late when
people have lost everything and have no food.
"We have one mission.
We need to feed anybody that is hungry and bring water to anybody who is thirsty and
make it happen now."
In 2019, chef José Andrés released a cookbook titled Vegetables Unleashed, part of his mission
to elevate vegetables from a side dish to a meal's main attraction.
Creating the cookbook, he explained to WBUR radio, was his way of saying,
"Hey, vegetables are here.
We need to take them seriously.
But don't be afraid of them.
Vegetables are fun, they are mayhem.
They like to misbehave."
The cookbook includes one dish that Andrés admitted is "the most insane recipe" he's
ever developed: compost potatoes.
As he explained in Vegetables Unleashed, the recipe was "conceived in a fit of passion"
when Andrés impulsively dumped some coffee grounds into a roasting pan, added some Peruvian
blue potatoes grown from his garden and then dumped the contents of his compost bin on
top of the concoction.
Andrés wrote of the discovery,
"It sounds crazy, but it makes sense."
When he began making his mark on the culinary scene, José Andrés was one of the leading
proponents of the molecular gastronomy trend.
In a 2010 60 Minutes profile on Andrés, correspondent Anderson Cooper described molecular gastronomy
as "a cooking technique that embraces science and technology," utilizing nontraditional
methods to create some seriously avante-garde cuisine.
While Andrés continues to embrace the ultra-creative, anything-goes ethos behind molecular gastronomy,
he's also come to believe that the term itself is essentially meaningless.
In a 2018 interview with NPR, he explained that all food is molecular:
"When you drink wine... when you drink beer... when you eat cheese... when your food gets
rotten...
your pickles, that's molecular."
The difference, he explained, was that in the past "we were clueless" about the scientific
processes behind, for example, fermentation and pickling.
Andrés told NPR:
"We didn't know why things happened."
Now that chefs have a science-based understanding of what happens to food on a molecular level,
Andrés believes they have the power to make food taste better.
And, according to Andrés, "that's the way forward."
When Russian troops under the command of President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, a former Soviet
Union member state, in February 2022, chef José Andrés mobilized his nonprofit World
Central Kitchen.
"There's many ways to fight.
Some people fight making sure that people are fed."
The group seeks to feed the planet's hungriest citizens in their most dire period of need.
Andrés set up a massive sandwich construction and distribution operation in Lviv, Ukraine
in March 2022.
The chef and his team use quality, nutritious ingredients to provide decent sustenance,
in this case packing sandwiches with fresh veggies, cheese, and two kinds of meat.
Each day, the WCK turned out 10,000 sandwiches a day at a train station as refugees came
into town.
The remainder of the meals headed to local shelters.
Andrés and company in Lviv additionally prepared 16,000 warm meals daily, consisting of pork,
potatoes, and soup.
They also set up satellite kitchens around Ukraine and in spots where refugees were headed,
such as Romania, Poland, and Hungary.
According to NPR, Andrés' team was on the scene in hundreds of spots across 12 Ukrainian
cities and was handing out free food to those who needed it just a day after Russia invaded.
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