Jose Andres, Fights With A Spatula Instead Of A Gun

Hi, I’m Rick Barron, your host, and welcome to That’s Life, I Swear

As the Ukraine war continues, people worldwide have come to their aid. Countries have provided military assistance, as requested by President Zelensky. Another group came to provide support, but they brought a spatula instead of a gun.

Let’s jump into this.

The world watched the horrific scenes of Ukrainian towns being torn apart and knocked down from their foundations. The entire country of Ukraine was becoming a disaster zone overnight. 

There have been many casualties over the past two months, but the one casualty that was hard to watch was people marching endlessly to other towns or out of the country to find refuge. Why they continued traveling for endless days to reach safety, the vast majority were reaching a point where food and water were becoming scarce and critical to their wellbeing.

Enter Chef Jose Andres, famed chef, and his World Central Kitchen team. 

At the outbreak of the Ukraine war, with his culinary skills, Jose brought his team over, with knowledge from past experiences, establishing kitchens in 10-12 Ukrainian cities, providing the transporting of food to the hungry and ensuring the citizens they would soon have warm meals. 

He displayed his astuteness in preparing for those leaving Ukraine and having kitchens ready in places like Romania, Hungry, Poland, and Slovakia.

What Jose and his team did was even more remarkable because setting up those kitchens was accomplished all in one day after the outbreak of the war!

As you might have guessed, this wasn’t Jose’s first rodeo. 

I like Jose’s approach to project management planning; he has none. As he explained to a reporter, his approach is that ‘we come, and we begin cooking.’

It was after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Andrés formed World Central Kitchen, which provides healthy food to families and individuals impacted by disasters.

Planting the seeds for the growth of the World Central Kitchen, going from various places in the world that needed food, Jose soon crafted his skill in dealing with disasters in a very expeditious manner. 

So, who is Jose Andre’s?

Jose was born in Spain. During the time he lived there, he discovered a passion for cooking. However, as he learned the fine art of cooking, he had help along the way. 

First, his parents taught him various skillsets about preparing meals, but where he polished his craft was working in the kitchen of Chef Ferran Adria’s groundbreaking avant-garde restaurant, elBulli. Then, at the young age of 22, José Andrés' spirit for adventure soon gave him the inspiration to pack his bags head out to the United States in 1991.

His first stop was in New York. What better place to start your cooking career? As time progressed, Jose worked at various New York restaurants, and from there, working in Washington, D.C., where he and his partners established a group of restaurants that have earned countless fans and won numerous awards over the years.

Jose is not one to sit still. He soon partnered with Robert Wilder to form the Think Food Group. Its mission was simple, to change the world through the power of food. But, unbeknownst to Jose, his calling would come into play at this moment in his life. With the creation of the Think Food Group, he would share his passion for cooking for a greater purpose.

Jose’s entry point to sharing his fine art of cooking was in 2010 during the Haiti earthquake. It was while there, the foundation for forming the World Central Kitchen came into play. This Haiti event would be the start of his humanitarian work. 

While in Haiti, Jose not only cooked meals, he learned the cuisine of Haitians. For example, he discovered the fine art of being schooled in cooking black beans mashed and sieved into a creamy sauce. Jose would take this learning lesson and carry it forward.

The mission of the World Central Kitchen is to provide healthy food to families and individuals impacted by disasters. Their approach is not just dumping bags of potatoes or rice and letting the recipients figure out how to mix and cook, but actually to set up kitchen camps. 

Jose’s team looks to hire local inhabitants to help them and quickly kick it into gear, to start the recovery process in providing warm meals. 

Jose sees food as a means to an end. Food is a jump-start to help rekindle a sense of community. By getting locals involved in the cooking process, they feel a positive sense of rebuilding their spirits and preventing what is vital… to avoid human hunger getting worse.

The World Central Kitchen has traveled many miles worldwide since its inception. They brought food relief to areas such as Puerto Rico when hit by Hurricane Maria, where they served four million meals! In addition, they helped those in need during the years of COVID-19, the terrible bushfires that torched various parts of Australia from 2019 to 2020, and other tragic events.

Why did Jose create the World Central Kitchen? From his perspective, food is a focal point. It’s the glue that holds life and families together, particularly in crises such as major storms, famine, and even war.

For those who fell into those unexpected dark moments that disrupted their lives, seeing Jose’s team coming down the road, realized that even when you’re on your knees in despair, someone out there truly cares about your well-being. For Jose and his team, their mindset was the bombing and bullets flying be damned. They were here to bring hope to the Ukrainians.  

What can we learn from this story?

For Jose and his World Central Kitchen team, it’s all in a day work really.

Even while working under conditions of constant bombing, Jose’s team proved nothing could or would deter them from fulfilling the purpose of their mission, and that was to ensure that those in need of food would not stay hungry and not be forgotten.

Think about this. Within weeks, World Central Kitchen created partnerships with restaurants and food trucks to distribute meals to people at border crossings, shelters, train stations, and other regions, including Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Moldova, and Romania.

Jose has dealt with worldwide disasters, but this was something new to him and his team. 

As his team moved from town to town, they saw firsthand the horror of war. Scenes such as witnessing a car blown apart and seeing what were children’s seats. Did they survive? Did the family make it to safety? Why was this happening? Why did it need to happen?

It was seeing those moments where Ukrainians who hadn’t had a decent meal in twenty to thirty days, their expressions of happiness coupled with despair, the horror of war etched on their faces while at the same time seeing joy and relief of a helping hand.

During his visit to Bucha, a town that got ripped apart from the Russian bombing, Jose ran short on food and needed to leave to collect additional supplies. He assured the town he would come back. With everything the people in Bucha had been through, it was no surprise that some had their doubts he would return.

Returned he did. 

Jose could see the reactions of the townspeople when he came back with additional supplies. He witnessed a comfort look of relief on their faces, reassurance if you will, that even in this terrible turbulence to their lives, there was indeed hope. Despite the loss of so many people, sad as it is, life must move on. 

Watching the evening news, I heard a Ukrainian say; it is what it is, we must continue. That spirit only intensified Jose and his team to continue their efforts. 

Other contributions the World Central Kitchen provided were working with local partners to help provide warm meals and delivering 25-pound food bags for people who can cook at home. 

Their efforts covered approximately 90 Ukrainian cities and towns and Poland, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Spain. As a result of this unity to help, over 300,000 meals a day were delivered, and transported 6.1 million pounds of food.

A Russian missile struck a community kitchen operated by Jose’s team during their stay. As a result, four workers at Andres’ World Central Kitchen partner restaurant were wounded and dozens of others. Tragically one person was killed.

One would’ve thought that Josie’s team would’ve called it quits after being struck, thinking risking their lives wasn’t worth it. Like hell they were going to quit. Those who were wounded were even more determined to go back to the kitchen once they were healed. 

They came here for a purpose and refused to be deterred by a little man in Moscow sitting at the end of a long white table.

Jose said it best when asked if his stay in Ukraine was scary. His reply, “Is it scary? Of course. It’s a war. You can be hit by a bomb or missile at any time. But people need our help.”

With a spatula in hand and a strong determination not to be stopped, Jose proved to the Ukrainians and the world that nothing is impossible. Jose’s team were heroes in aprons and told Mr. Putin that the world would stand by them, and they would do it with a spatula instead of a gun.

At the time of this episode, approximately 4.6 million Ukrainians have left their country as refugees. They’ve gone to Poland, Hungry, Romania, Slovakia, and Moldova. Others have traveled even further, to Germany, England, and the United States.

To translate 4.6 million in a more visual context, it’s the equivalent of Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Oklahoma, whose total populations of these states range from 4.0 million to 4.6 million

As Jose and his team provide warm meals and relief to the people of Ukraine, perhaps there is a future chef amongst the crowd who will one day follow into the same career path as Jose. When they do, they will tell others the story of another chef that came to their towns and gave them inspiration that life will improve and get better.

I know it’s a cliché, but we need more people like Jose. 

He expressed it very well his purpose for what he does today, and I quote, “At least, feeding people is what makes sense. Longer table, people working together to make sure that one plate of food at a time we can bring hope of a better tomorrow.”

Well, there you go. That’s life, I swear.

For further information regarding the material covered in this episode, I invite you to visit my website that you can find on either Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts, for show notes calling out key pieces of content mentioned, and the episode transcript.

As always, I thank you for listening.

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