Its unique history dates back to Mieres, the small town in Asturias where it was born. However, he grew up in Barcelona, where he learned about stews and stoves next to his mother. He was one of the disciples of El Bulli, the celebrated restaurant of Ferran Adrià, of whom he is now a partner in Little Spain in New York, although he also worked in the kitchens of Spanish Navy ships until arriving in New York in 1991, where your American dream began.
His passion for cooking and for creating concepts is as great as the humanitarian work he does at World Central Kitchen, the non-profit organization he founded in 2010 in response to the earthquake that shook and devastated Haiti. Since then, she has brought relief to people through hot, fresh meals in both war and natural disaster settings.
Today, what started with a group of volunteers is one of the largest humanitarian aid organizations in the world, as the more than 70 million meals they have delivered attest. But it is his unstoppable mentality and his contagious energy that allow him to be aware of both his business (diners and employees) and his family, all of this before becoming a kind of superhero when he hears the call of those most in need. At times his frenetic pace seems to make him omnipresent, as if he has the ability to be in different places at the same time.
“At the center of all this madness, the glue that holds me together and keeps me from falling apart is my desire to feed the world. Not just Instagram foodies and the handful of people who can afford to go to my fancy restaurants. Not just to the people of Haiti, with whom we work to build clean cookstoves and solar cookers, or to the 5,000 homeless people we feed daily in Washington DC
I want to feed everyone and do it in a way that inspires people to look at food from a new angle, “he says in his book Vegetables without limits. José Andrés does not dispatch from a computer in an office, but risks his skin on the battlefield, as evidenced by his presence in Ukraine, where he flew with his team to spread a little warmth for the soul in the midst of uncertainty and the disappointment.
There are already multiple awards and recognitions that he has achieved with his restaurants and with his facet of philanthropy and activism, which has been portrayed in the documentary Feeding the World, directed by Ron Howard for National Geographic. In the film, a camera tracks José Andrés in his task of providing more than just food.
At the end of the day, a meal is not only to satisfy the appetite, but it can also translate into hope, food for the spirit and dignity. “Food is not just gasoline. It is history, culture, politics, art. It is nourishing for the soul. If I sound excited and a little emotional it’s because I am. There is a simple fact in life and that is that we will eat two or three meals a day until we die. We should all be experts in eating. Here is my mark on how to become one”, he states in the preface of the aforementioned book.
Meanwhile, José Andrés continues to reach more people as he tries to increase donations for his organization. A seed of hope in a world that has been walking on the precipice for too long.
Why we choose it?
He is the founder of World Central Kitchen, the non-governmental organization with which he has delivered more than 70 million meals to people in a state of vulnerability in war zones or natural disasters.