Welcome to the show.
What an amazing book you've written.
You know what it's funny, is I-I met José at an event
and we started talking about food. I don't know.
He looked at me and he was like, "You like food,"
and we started talking about food.
And this is a fascinating man who told me a story
about going to places that have been hit by natural disasters
or disasters of any kind, and cooking food for the people
who have been removed from their homes.
How do you get started in that? And how did your story begin
with Puerto Rico, specifically?
'Cause you've had an interesting relationship with the nation.
Well, Puerto Rico, I went there first time over 25 years ago.
And I really fall in love with that island.
Puerto Ricans are amazing people.
They love to dance salsa.
They celebrate life.
I was lucky enough to have a restaurant in Dorado
for the last few years.
But then Maria, the hurricane was coming.
And I was watching.
My team and I, we already were in Houston.
So we helped there. We made a few hundred thousand meals.
We were kind of all right.
Hurricane hit, on the first plane, we landed.
And we began making a few meals, a few thousand meals a day,
but we saw that the problem was getting, if anything,
bigger and bigger, so we kept cooking.
And we went from a thousand meals
to 150,000 meals a day,
more than 3.7 million meals in total,
from 20 volunteers to 25,000 volunteers,
from one kitchen to 26 kitchens.
We didn't plan, the only thing we did was start cooking.
Every phone call we got, any e-mail, tweet,
Facebook-- "We are hungry," we never said no.
We kept feeding anybody that asked us for a meal.
It's a-- It's...
(cheering and applause)
It's really a story where, you know, the beauty
of what yourself and your team have done is only, you know,
I guess, amplified by the tragedy of the island as well.
Because you went through a really tough period
of learning how to cook for the people in each place.
-Because, I mean, you did this in Haiti as well. -Yeah.
And what's interesting, is a lot of people might say,
"Why don't you send food packets there, you know.
Why are you going there to physically cook for the people?"
But you talk about that in the book.
Could you share why you do that?
I mean, you imagine, right--
I think we are who we are thanks to,
in a way, the food we eat.
And it's okay, in emergencies
you just give the MREs, the meals ready to eat.
But that was created for our military during war.
But I saw in Haiti that kids, even hungry,
they didn't want to eat those MREs.
They prefer just a humble plate of beans and rice.
That brings comfort.
And when I was cooking in Haiti,
and I made those beans--
and we cooked for almost a camp.
A refugee camp, 1,000 people.
And the woman came to me, and with a translator,
they were saying like, "We don't like that."
And I was like, "What? I am José Andrés."
Well, they wanted to eat their beans
in the way they like them.
They didn't want them whole.
They want them puree, to make the beans into sauce.
You know what we did? We follow their guidance.
We made them into a sauce. All of a sudden they were happy.
They were being fed in the way they like to eat.
-Right. -Food, in essence, gives you hope
that tomorrow, maybe things will be better.
That's why a plate of food is so important in those moments.
It's so fascinating
because you've been out there on the ground,
and it's, I mean, really incredible timing
that you're here now today speaking about this
when the president of the United States
is tweeting out saying that, you know,
the disaster wasn't as much of a disaster
as people claim it to be.
You were actually on the ground.
-You saw what happened. -(exhales)
How does it make you feel, and how do you respond
to what people are seeing the president saying today?
I mean, we need to help our president.
(laughter)
We really do.
Because we should be showing the empathy he doesn't have.
I think he tries, but I think it's lost somewhere
between his hair and somewhere else.
And only to see him...
used to say it was only 16 deaths
when it it was very obvious for many people on the island
that the death toll was much higher.
And used to come all of a sudden
with this stupid tweet saying,
"Well, actually, the 3,000 people,
the Democrats made that up."
When you are dead, you are not Republican or you are Democrat.
You are American people,
and your government forgot about you.
And all those people were on the watch of President Donald Trump.
So come on, man, show some empathy.
You show some support,
because those people die, die under his watch.
And if he did more, probably we would be talking
about a much smaller number.
-Right. -Unfortunately, didn't happen.
When you look at the story of Puerto Rico,
as someone who's been on the ground, what are some
of the most inspiring stories you've encountered?
Are there moments where you've thought to yourself,
"You know, this is how Puerto Rico will get through it.
This is what makes Puerto Rico so special"?
Uh, you know, I saw so many children,
especially girls, ten years old, like Lola.
Their father or mother, they work in a food truck,
and they would go around the island.
We had a total of ten food trucks.
She will stay in the headquarters
in a kitchen that we were doing 75,000 meals a day.
She was ten years old, but she was in charge
of the entire line of making sandwiches.
Ham, cheese, mayo.
And you had to see there a ten-year-old
in charge of 100 people in a line,
telling them, "Come on, people, quicker.
More ham, more cheese, more mayo."
President Trump, if a ten-year-old
can lead a line of 100 people making sandwiches,
shouldn't you be leading better?
Simple.
So simple even a ten-year-old could do it.
We Fed an Island is available now.
An amazing story and amazing man.
José Andrés, everybody.