Few others boarded aircraft in the United States on March 12, let alone headed for the cruiser Grand Princess. The COVID-19 was discovered among the ship’s 2,400 passengers after leaving Hawaii, which made the ship as popular as the Flying Dutchman; The Great Princess had to roam the California coast for days before she was allowed to dock.
But this is Jose Andrew, walking on an air bridge in Newark, New Jersey, for a flight at 6:30 a. m. San Francisco. Su beige vest with many matching wallets and cap emanates an indistinct fisherman’s atmosphere, however, anyone who has placed Andrew – he is a prominent chef – may also recognize the apparatus in which he transforms when he rushes to the scene of the crisis. The flight is long and there is plenty of time to contemplate the dimensions of the crisis that is already silently spreading across the country. Down.
“I feel that if something vital happens, the America we see from this window. . . ” he said, interrupting as he looked at the Rocky Mountains. He had talked about the lack of surgical masks and tests of the corona virus, and now he left the following The idea remains tácita. “It’s like a movie, man. Maybe we’re overreacting. But it’s okay, exaggerate in this case. “
Andrés’ developing charity, World Central Kitchen, is as ready as any at this time of unprecedented global crisis. The nonprofit establishes kitchens in the countryside to feed thousands of others with fresh, nutritious and occasionally hot food as soon as you can imagine. In the scene of a hurricane, earthquake, whirlwind or flood. As a global public fitness emergency, COVID-19 has not been limited to one place. But it pulverizes the economy as it moves around the world, and other people want cash to eat. . World Central Kitchen already distributes food in low-income neighborhoods in big cities like New York, and monitors food shortages in the world elsewhere, some of which are actually serious.
Meanwhile, Andrew is a lesson in crisis leadership, in a crisis in which the U. S. government’s reaction has been slow, confusing, and uncertain, his cuisine models the habit, agile, confident, proactive, that the general public wants in the event of a crisis (and, so far, has provided it more reliably than the federal government). Consider the wonderful princess. President Donald Trump has made it clear that he would have liked other people to stay aboard the shipment so that inflamed passengers would not accumulate the number of times he looked on a non-public board (“I like the numbers where they are are”). Then, a few breaths later, the president said he depended on experts, which made life less complicated for the passengers and quarantine crews who landed, a few hundred at a time, for a week, but more complicated for Americans in Seeking transparent and unequivocal education, so essential for public health. “We have a president more concerned about the fall of Wall Street,” says Andrew, “than the virus itself. “
At Oakland Harbor, where he docked the Grand Princess in spite of everything, Andrew’s team made their own statement: installing a tent on the side of the ship, carrying new food not only for quarantined passengers but also for the crew. “When we hear about a tragedy, we all got stuck in ‘what’s the most productive way to help?’,” playwright and manufacturer Lin-Manuel Miranda tells TIME, who first connected with Andrés in Hurricane Maria’s aid efforts in 2017. “He just rushes down there.
Andrew, at the age of 50, is charismatic, impulsive, funny, frank and motivated, an idealist who nurtures thousands of people and a competitor who will get you out of the way on the basketball court. He is also one of America’s best-known chefs. Its ThinkFoodGroup of more than 30 dining venues includes places in Washington, D. CArray; Florida; California; New York and five other states; And the Bahamas. They range from state-of-the-art food to a food yard that new York Times food critic called New York’s new status quo of 2019. But in recent years Andrés, a Spanish immigrant, has attracted more. attention to his humanitarian, work. World Central Kitchen prepared nearly four million food for the other people of Puerto Rico after the devastation caused by Maria (he titled his e-book We Fed an Island). The organization has introduced food missions in thirteen countries, serving some 15 million food and bringing in combination more than 4,000 volunteers. Andrés has been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
When he landed in the Bay Area, he got on the phone with Nate Mook, CEO of World Central Kitchen, to discuss a possible partnership with Panera Bread to offer meals. He put on a mask and visited the kitchen his organization had. installed at the University of San Francisco, where dozens of employees were preparing jambalaya and salads for quarantined passengers. He thanked his staff, many of whom are veterans beyond feeding efforts, but noted the dangers of overcrowding in a spare kitchen in the COVID Era of ’19. “Less people are better,” he told a member of World Central Kitchen. “Otherwise, we’re going to fall like flies. “
Next step: the cruise, to distribute meals. On the Bay Bridge to Oakland, Andrew was already getting over the task as he talked to Mook about investing in a massive feeding program. “It’s going to be anything the history books remember. “says. ” It’s going to be beyond 9/11, beyond Katrina. Look big. Because every time we see big, we comply. And the money comes. ” Later that night, Andrew and his staff huddled with Oakland-based company executives Revolution Foods, who have contracts to cook and deliver school meals: they continued to operate during the COVID-19 emergency. Andrew suggested the CEO of the company and The Head chef to isolate the chefs from becoming infected. He helped them forge partnerships: with the restaurants ordered closed, Andrés noted, many chefs will soon run out of paintings and need help.
“My friends,” Andrew told his team, “maybe that’s why World Central Kitchen was created.
It was during Hurricane Maria that Andrew learned to reduce government bureaucracy to fill a leadership vacuum and feed the masses. From a niche nonprofit that supports sustainable food and white food projects in underdeveloped countries such as Haiti, World Central Kitchen has become the world leader in food players. Somehow, the face of global crisis relief is a tough guy who likes to shout “Boum!”when he hears something he likes, and leans against his when he needs to do something. Andrew and his box staff flock to crisis sites around the world, acting as one of the first reporters on the floor on social media. They have been deployed in forest fires in California, an earthquake in Albania, a volcanic eruption in Guatemala.
When Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas last September, World Central Kitchen seized helicopters and seaplanes to obtain food in the Abaco Islands, which lay among the rubble. “In the end, we brought hope as fast as anyone else,” Andrew says. “No one told me I’m guilty of feeding the Bahamas. I said I’m guilty of feeding the Bahamas. ” This year, World Central Kitchen staff traveled to Australia to help citizens affected by wildfires and Tennessee after tornadoes in Nashville rule. killed at least 25 people.
He was not caught off guard by the coronavirus. In February, World Central Kitchen transported food on another inflamed Princess cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, docked in Yokohama, Japan. Field Operations Leader Sam Bloch had flown from the Australia Wildfire Project to Los Angeles and been diverted across the Pacific. On March 15, when states ordered the closure of public spaces, Andrés announced the conversion of five of his Washington DC domain restaurants and the New York City store to network kitchens. Since March 25, World Central Kitchen has worked with partners to coordinate the delivery, through 160 distribution points, of more than 150,000 New York fresh, packaged and family-friendly foods; Washington DC Array; Little Rock, ArkArray; Oakland; New Orleans; The Angels; Miami; Boston; and Madrid. Across the country, the Chefs for America online map shows 346 restaurants and 567 school districts offering food. On March 23 and 24, Andrés toured Washington to distribute more than 13,000 N95 respirators, leftover from previous World Central Kitchen cruise feeding operations, to health personnel fighting COVID-19 on the lines. head on.
“We want to make sure we build shorter walls and longer tables,” Andrew likes to say, explaining his difference to Trump. He withdrew from a lunch agreement at the Trump Hotel in Washington after the candidate announced his campaign, calling mexicans “rapists. “(The Trump organization filed a lawsuit; ThinkFoodGroup challenged; the matter was resolved). When the government closed in early 2019, World Central Kitchen and its partners prepared 300,000 food for federal staff on a check-to-check license. Recently, on a plane to Las Vegas, Andrew told me, a Trump supporter told him that although he knew the chef didn’t like “my boy,” Andrew was still a smart guy.
“What we had to do,” says Andrés, “is to militarize empathy. Without empathy, nothing works.
Andrew grew up in northern Spain, the son of nurses. The kitchen was seductive. ” The touch, the transformation of things, their smells, their tastes, brought other people closer,” Says Andrew. “I love clay. I love, fire. Maybe I’m a distant relative of Prometheus. ” He likes to tell a story: as a child, he sought to remove the paellera, but his father wouldn’t let him cook. First we had to inform him to control the fire.
After culinary school in Barcelona and a stint in the Spanish Navy cooking for an admiral, Andrés arrived in New York City in 1991 as a 21-year-old chef with $ 50 in his pocket. He moved to DC a few years later to help start a Spanish-themed eating place, Jaleo, and helped popularize tapas in the US Good luck gave him the freedom to open more places to eat and experiment. new dishes. In 2016, the minibar in D. C. , which offers a tasting menu of a few dozen small plates, earned the coveted two-star Michelin rating. “He’s probably the top artistic chef in the world today,” says French chef Eric Ripert, whose flagship New York restaurant, Le Bernardin, consistently ranks among the top producers on the planet. Ripert issues a waffle filled with foie gras mousse, served in the barmini, the cocktail bar and the minibar snack, as an Andres creation that left you speechless. “The waffles are meant to be tasty,” he says. “Your chances of good fortune are at most zero. You see it coming and you say to yourself: “What is this?” It is full of surprises. “
In an interview a few years ago, Andrew, who became an American citizen in 2013, said he was talking about its ingredients, but when I ask him if he talks about his garlic, he tells me not to take it literally. “you are a cook and you do not perceive the history and physics of water, of tomato, it is very difficult for you to do anything. Come on, talking about the ingredients is fine, are you aware of what’s in your hands?Are you immersed in your thoughts?
As Andrew’s restaurants grew in the 1990s and his profile continued to grow — a PBS program, Made in Spain, for example, completed in 2008–, turned to philanthropy and lent time and resources to DCCentral Kitchen, a local charity that not only feeds homeless people and citizens in need of the capital , but it also trains them to find work in the kitchen. In 2010, after visiting Haiti after that year’s earthquake, he founded World Central Kitchen. “My total story with him listening to “You’re crazy,” says Robert Egger, founder of DCCentral Kitchen. “That’s right. In this scenario, if you come to see me and have an intergalactic cooking concept, I say to myself, “F-cking A, that’s fine. I’m on board. “
The organization helped with Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and in August 2017, Andrew traveled to Houston to help mobilize leaders after Hurricane Harvey. All the paintings led to Hurricane Maria, which made landfall in September. “Puerto Rico is the time when it’s like, it’s okay, it’s time to put into practice everything we’ve absorbed over the years,” says Mook, CEO of World Central Kitchen. “We have noticed the absolute paralysis of the government’s response. We learned that we were on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. We said, let’s start somewhere. Let’s start cooking. (Andrew gave the impression on TIME’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2012 and 2018).
World Central Kitchen understood that instead of relying on packaged food arriving from abroad, ‘ready to eat’ (MRE) in emergency parlance, Andrés and his team can take advantage of existing chains of origin. and local chefs to prepare hot meals. As his profile has expanded, his earnings have grown from around $ 650,000 in 2016 to $ 28. 5 million in 2019, and the organization now has the means to rent local assistance, as well as to dispatch its own operations experts, to reactivate the food. Settlement Roughly two-thirds of World Central Kitchen’s earnings in 2019, or $ 19. 1 million, come from individual donations, ranging from giant donations from philanthropists (including TIME owners and co-chairs Marc and Lynne Benioff) to children who donated $ 6 . of your assignment. Former President Bill Clinton, whose Clinton Global Initiative supported World Central Kitchen, says Andrew’s empathic action is more important than ever in those divisive times. “If you spend more time in your fears than in your hopes, in your resentments than in your compassion, and if you divide other people, in an interdependent world bad things will happen”, Clinton, who first spent a lot of time with Andrés. in Haiti after the earthquake, says TIME. “If that is all you are doing, you are not helping other people who have been victimized, neglected or neglected. It is a style of walking of what the citizen of the 21st century deserves to be. “
About two months before his arrival in Oakland, Andrew entered another airport, in San Juan, the first user to leave his flight from Washington, DC “Go do your thing, boss,” a guy sitting at another door while he was doing a magnitude 6. 4 earthquake brought Andrew back, a car was waiting to take him south. , where tremors destroyed houses and left other hungry people sleeping in tents. Rico, Andrew presented a master class on multitasking, a leader in ThinkFoodGroup’s business over the phone: “I never realized the deal. I want to see the deal before I make a sign,” he yelled at one executive, while in another, he was preparing the staff at the World Central Kitchen box for his arrival. “I have good news and bad news,” he told one of them. “The bad news is I’m going. . . “
Working for the Andrew Francs is not for the faint of heart. On the other hand, the chaos of a dining room’s kitchen results in a crisis zone. He rubs his eyes and pulls his beard, before expressing his frustration. say you put too much food on a tray, ” he told some of his workers in Puerto Rico. “But it never happens.
During his 36 hours in Puerto Rico, Andrew has become frightened in part of a dozen World Central Kitchen sites to help with feeding efforts, on baseball fields, an athletics facility and a small indoor kitchen in the town of Ponce, where staff prepare ham and cheese. sandwiches with mayonnaise balls. “It makes them easy to chew for the elderly,” Andrew says. The chef shared a silent verbal ex-replace with an overworked food truck operator that World Central Kitchen had hired, ingesting him to replace the dinner menu before caring back and leaving for his next stop. In Guayanilla, Andrés lay down to distribute solar lamps to frightened citizens sleeping outdoors in the dark. At Windsorco, he made meat sauce at one of World Central Kitchen’s iconic giant paelleras. A few days after the earthquake, Andrew’s operation worked. 12,000 foods a day in Puerto Rico.
On the early morning flight to Fort Lauderdale, Andrew earned the name loudest snorer on board. The night before he had surrendered behind, enjoying a few glasses of his favorite drink, bitter rum, in the restaurant San Juan, whose namesake. The chef, José Enrique, had opened the doors of his kitchen in Andrew after Maria and had woken up that morning for a radio interview before the flight. In Florida, I would take a personal charter for Marsh Harbour, pierced by Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas, where empty cars are still in the look of the road and where there is only one stove left where a kitchen once was in most people’s homes. Although the hurricane hit more than 3 months ago, World Central Kitchen is still very present. : Andrew is proud that his team is not only parachuting, they are staying.
Andrés went door to door, delivering a score of hot meals, proceeding with his deliveries long after dark. Afterward, it hurt him that some of his assistants were too devastated to sign him up for dinner and drinks. On the way back to the hotel, his head spun with such force that he seemed to be in danger of falling to the ground, but once at the hotel, he wanted to stay awake a little longer, have a drink of Irish whiskey on the beach and look at the stars.
Perhaps Andrés hits so hard because he lives in perpetual motion, acting on impulse. Your “plans” deserve appointments. He yells “Come on” in his booming voice, then stays an hour longer, taking pictures, dragging a box of apples to help feed people, talking to anyone within earshot. After leaving the cruise ship in Oakland, Andrés and his team were scheduled to lean over a hotel room in San Francisco to discover their strategy for feeding the United States in the wake of COVID-19. A staff member used the phones to reserve a convention room. But first, a spontaneous lunch broke: Andrés took five employees to a favorite Chinese restaurant, which was almost empty due to coronavirus fears, for a bunch of dim sum. Then Andrés said that he was looking to move the assembly to a park. Then, instead of crouching in the grass, Andrés made the decision that everyone, adding himself, should locate a barber to shave their beards and cut their hair after a social media user pointed out that facial hair may decrease the effectiveness of the mask worn by the N95 World Central Kitchen staff. Andrés, who had been awake until at least 2 a. m. on the east coast before catching his early morning transcontinental flight, he passed out in the barber’s chair, shaving cream on his neck.
What looks like a dispersed technique can paint in the management of a crisis: a stopover in the Bahamas, Andrew was in constant contact with his team in Puerto Rico, where another 6. 0 magnitude earthquake occurred after his departure, but human relations are anything else. If you become inactive on Twitter when you ask for attention, it can be irritating. “It’s the salt of my life because it actually brings color and flavor,” says Patricia, Wife of Andrew, also from Spain; met him in the 1990s. “But infrequently I need to kill him, okay? Don’t get me wrong. Or throw it out the window.
Andrew rarely is in his head and on a mission, he is oblivious to his surroundings, he opens a door before the vehicle stops completely, he has a habit of circling, looking straight forward, vital calls on his cell phone: in Marsh Harbour, a car that entered a takeaway store almost ran him over. At one point, while someone appeared at the right angle as they sought to take a developing lettuce image in a greenhouse, they bent in front of a ramp and almost got rid of the crop component.
But a tendency to distraction hides his intense concentration in everything he tries to achieve. Andrew plays to win. The day before the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game in February, I joined him to work out in the gymnasium of the National Association of Basketball Players in New York. Su friend Jose Calderón, a former Spanish NBA player, works as a special assistant to the union executive. In a 3-on-3 game, Andrew touched me with his shoulders, looking slightly to move his feet. It turned out he used similar tactics while playing with his daughters at the entrance to his home in Bethesda, Maryland. “We were 10, 12 years old, and he didn’t care,” says his eldest daughter Charlotte, 21. ” We were on the floor. “He wasn’t much nicer to the officers in his youth hoop competitions. “They kicked him out of my games several times, ” said Charlotte. ” I think it started when I was in grade at the moment. “
It brings temperament and tenderness. ” I’m getting very anxious,” he said aloud to one of his support staff members over the phone in Puerto Rico. “Can we provide ourselves at the same time and position for once. . . Are we in control or are we in control?” But then he would tell his team how proud he is of them or how much he loves them, when he heard that his classmates were telling the 9-year-old daughter of one of his employees that he could get a coronavirus because his father was around. Until the cruise, Andrew took her colleague’s phone and recorded a video message for her and two more young women. Fratrie. ” Your dad’s a hero, period,” Andrew said, drowning a little. “So don’t worry, your dad will soon go home and take care of all of you. And I just need you to be super proud of your father.
In the Bahamas, a woman yelled at Andrew from his car and merely put his hands together, as if he were in a church; On her way to her workplace in Washington DC in February, a woman from Japan stopped to thank her for feeding passengers from cruise ships moored in Yokohama, and as she walked through downtown San Francisco, blowing a cigar, a woman came to her cautiously to tell her that she had donated to World Central Kitchen and that it was an honor to meet him , then he pointed away, as if he had just altered a rare air.
His resolve to go to San Francisco, where one of his workers was dressed in a dangerous fabric cover suit while driving the food forklift to the cruise, didn’t make much sense to me. The World Central Kitchen team was very smart at lunch. the project was over. DC was to serve as the Chiefs’ means of communication for the United States to fight hunger caused by COVID-19 outages. So why does the guy who says he “wants to take the U. S. food initiative” after the threat of the epidemic get sick or fall to earth 2,500 miles from the port of his home?
This line of inquiry annoys him. ” Damn it, I need to be with the boys to see him and thank him,” Andrew said on the flight west. “What to ask, how, why the hell are you getting married?a chef who has worked on past World Central Kitchen missions, a chef at the University of San Francisco, illuminates artifacts when she sees Andrew. They’re exchanging a hug. Andrew turns to me. “You’re asking me why I’m going, ” he said, What’s f-ck?
Andrew has something not unusual with his friend Clinton: she needs to bond with people. His public face, which laughs on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, pumps World Central Kitchen on social media, gives booming speeches to an audience that clings to every word, has earned him a reputation as a tireless defender of humanity. But it doesn’t feel so fresh. On the flight from Florida to the Bahamas in January, Andrew nevertheless put his phone aside, lay down and admitted that he weighs on him the expectation of feeding the global and running about 30 restaurants. In recent years, one of his parents has passed away. His intelligent friend Anthony Bourdain committed suicide. Two of his daughters went to college. “You wake up in the morning and you’re like, oooof,” Andrew says. Sometimes he needs to stay in bed. ” It’s all happening in front of you and you feel like you’re losing control. “
You’ll also have to struggle to get in too deeply. ” My biggest fear is that the dream of feeding the world will take my bill and be almost sick,” Says Andrew. “You’re completely obsessed with that. You’re having dinner somewhere and you’re looking on your phone. What’s going on in Syria, what happened there, how come we’re not there?I have a business to run. I have a family. I can’t disappear from the lives of other people who love me too. “
Patricia recalls that her husband woke up one morning worried about 3 years ago, before Hurricane Maria, when he was already a renowned award-winning chef and said, “What am I going to do with my life?” she says. Am I doing enough? I’m not doing anything,” he expresses those feelings. “He doesn’t look at what he did, ” he said. ” He’s looking for what he was given to do. “
Those closest to him are concerned that all the paintings will exhaust him. “I wish I could lose weight and get back in shape,” Says Patricia. That Nobel Prize nomination for Peace and World Worship is smart and everything: imagine, he jokingly said, what he could do if he were in better shape.
“The only thing I’m worried about is that I don’t think I spend enough time chasing Joseph,” Clinton says. “He works hard. I don’t need it to end. I don’t need him to die someday. “because it has a central attack, because it never took the time to exercise, relax and do what it has to do. It’s a treasure. It’s a national treasure for us, and a global treasure now. This is actually one of the most special people I’ve ever met. »
Andrés avoids all calls to limit: he insists that he runs 325 days a year, but admits that the suffering he saw up close during the crisis scenes: corpses, old people sleeping in dirty beds, starving others eating roots. and drinking dirty water – they tire your mind. To cope, he seldom resorts to what he calls “strange thinking” for his convenience. The concept is that as more and more weather bugs inevitably hit the evolved and underdeveloped worlds, the underdeveloped worlds in regions like the Bahamas and Puerto Rico may at least be better equipped to deal with them. “This gives me a bit strange happiness only in the sense that you say: You know what? Maybe life will prepare them for a worse time,” says Andrés. “And in fact, the most powerful will and it’s not me, it’s not us, it’s them. “
Meanwhile, Andrew swears that World Central Kitchen will continue to grow. The timeshare between the nonprofit and its restaurants had not harmed the business before the closure of COVID-19, on the contrary, revenues have doubled in more than two years. Thanks in large part to the opening of Mercado Little Spain, the food market in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards complex, Andrés’ passodwill has won from World Central Kitchen and its development profile has also helped. Andrés believes that World Central Kitchen, in 10, is He and his team are learning as they go along, and is convinced that with COVID-19 threatening the well-known American lifestyle, World Central Kitchen will pass its greatest control to date.
“We will be there to cover the blind spots that the formula will have,” says Andrés on the sidewalk of the SFO, before taking his flight back to DC. “In a crisis like this one cannot wait for the government to cover everything, the big NGOs will control everything. We have already been the first on the front lines. And I have a feeling that we will be the last to leave the front lines. That is the case. “
let’s go.