After serving more than 2 million meals in Puerto Rico following the Hurricane Maria disaster, chef José Andrés announced that his “Chefs for Puerto Rico” campaign would be winding down operations on the island and leaving only a core crew working through Thanksgiving—or at least, that’s what he thought. According to Eater, the chef’s World Center Kitchen now plans to stay through at least Christmas to focus “on remote areas and harder-hit communities—those that, according to Andrés, aren’t receiving much aid from other groups”:
Last week, World Central Kitchen’s kitchen on Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, served its 20,000th meal. And today, from the World Central Kitchen in Ponce, Andrés praised chef Ventura Vivoni for cooking more than 36,000 meals for “the often forgotten center of the island.”
While it’s true that local stores and food stands are reopening to reestablish their vital roles in their local economies and communities—“an NGO has no right taking money away from business,” the chef cited as a reason why his campaign was winding down—the New York Times reports that more than one-half of the island remains without power. For World Central Kitchen, reaching Puerto Ricans who cannot work their electric stoves remains as much a priority as assisting the elderly and those living in remote areas:
From outside Ryder Home for the Elderly in Humacao, a municipality on Puerto Rico’s eastern coast, Andrés explains exactly why World Central Kitchen is so needed. According to the chef, certain buildings don’t allow gas, meaning the stoves must run on electricity. And although these buildings have generators, they only provide enough electricity for elevators and some light, making cooking hot meals impossible. “The problem is real,” he says. “That is why we are bringing food to these people.”
And, it’s been a problem he, his kitchen, and volunteers have been tackling with epic force. During its peak, Chefs for Puerto Rico had 18 kitchens throughout the island at a cost of nearly $500,000 daily, including a coliseum where he and up to 500 volunteers prepared more than 60,000 meals every day. According to a New York Times profile, Andrés’ initiative was “by all accounts the largest emergency feeding program ever set up by a group of chefs.”
"The operation grew so big that at one point you couldn’t find any sliced cheese in all of Puerto Rico. The team had bought it all up for sandwiches”:
His team deployed food trucks, like a strike force, to isolated neighborhoods and towns that needed help. Agents of Homeland Security Investigations, a division of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were serving as emergency workers, and staying in the same hotel as Mr. Andrés’s crew. The chef persuaded them to load food into their vehicles every morning as they headed out to patrol.
He negotiated with a chain of vocational schools around the island to let culinary students cook there. During visits to his kitchens, 18 in all, he admonished volunteers to add more mayonnaise to sandwiches, keep the temperature up on the pans of rice or serve bigger portions.
The Compass Group, a giant American food-service operation that Mr. Andrés recently partnered with, sent someone who understood what it takes to feed several thousand people at a time.
Mr. Andrés recruited his own chefs, too. David Thomas, accustomed to making $540 suckling pigs as the executive chef at Mr. Andrés’s Bazaar Meat restaurant in Las Vegas, suddenly found himself trying to figure out how to make meals out of donations that might include 5,000 pounds of lunch meat one day and 17 pallets of yogurt the next.
While the campaign was eventually aided by donations from readers like you and a $10 million contract with the Federal Emergency Management System (FEMA), Chefs for Puerto Rico initially ran on the chef’s personal credit cards and cash. “Mr. Andrés left the island only a few times, the first after 11 days on the ground. He had lost 25 pounds and became dehydrated.” But that didn’t matter to him, telling the New York Times that “at the end, I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t try to do what I thought was right. We need to think less sometimes and dream less and just make it happen.” Especially during a time when our fellow Americans are hurting.