There’s been some Twitter chatter here and there that Chef José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for serving over two million meals in Puerto Rico following Maria, but why shouldn’t it actually happen? According to a New York Times profile, Andrés’s “Chefs for Puerto Rico” was “by all accounts the largest emergency feeding program ever set up by a group of chefs,” a Herculean effort that surpassed the Red Cross and the United States government:
Since he hit the ground five days after the hurricane devastated this island of 3.4 million on Sept. 20, he has built a network of kitchens, supply chains and delivery services that as of Monday had served more than 2.2 million warm meals and sandwiches. No other single agency — not the Red Cross, the Salvation Army nor any government entity — has fed more people freshly cooked food since the hurricane, or done it in such a nurturing way.
Andrés took one of the first commercial flights available to Puerto Rico after Maria, at first financing the food through his own personal credit cards and cash. By its peak, “Chefs for Puerto Rico” had 18 kitchens throughout the island at cost of nearly half a million dollars daily, including a coliseum where he and up to 500 volunteers prepared more than 60,000 meals every day. Some of these meals were taken to out-of-reach, remote areas where people were hurting the most:
Mr. Andrés, who often rolls right over regulations and ignores the word “no,” clashed more than once with FEMA and other large organizations that have a more-seasoned and methodical approach. In meetings and telephone calls, FEMA officials reminded him that he and his people lacked the experience needed to organize a mass emergency feeding operation, he said.
“We are not perfect, but that doesn’t mean the government is perfect,” Mr. Andrés said. “I am doing it without red tape and 100 meetings.”
FEMA has rightly been criticized for its lack of humane response to Puerto Rico and Donald Trump-like pettiness, following FEMA administrator Brock Long admitting in a televised interview that he had “filtered out” San Juan’s mayor. FEMA actually secured $10 million for “Chefs for Puerto Rico” but visibly bristled to the NYT regarding Andrés. “FEMA officials contacted for this article were quick to point out that many other groups and agencies besides World Central Kitchen were feeding Puerto Rico; a spokesman would not publicly discuss Mr. Andrés or his operation.”
Unlike many of Donald Trump’s cabinet and administration officials, Andrés had relevant experience before setting out to Puerto Rico—his recovery efforts during and after the Sandy and Harvey disasters set the gears in motion for how he would work on the island:
Mr. Andrés helped out after Hurricane Sandy, but his first big lesson in emergency food relief came in August, when he rallied local chefs in Houston to help feed survivors of Hurricane Harvey.
Other Houston chefs and caterers started a website called “I Have Food I Need Food” and used social media to create a system to organize donations, cook food and get it delivered. They codified their effort in a manual and sent it to chefs in Miami who were staring down Hurricane Irma, which landed 16 days later.
Mr. Andrés went to Houston in part to study how to expand the scope of World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit association of chefs he established in 2011 after helping Haiti earthquake victims a year earlier. The idea was to learn how he and Brian MacNair, World Central Kitchen’s executive director, could add emergency food relief to an agenda that already included building school kitchens, organizing culinary training and offering other forms of support in several countries.
But nothing prepared Mr. Andrés for what he faced in Puerto Rico. After taking one of the first commercial flights to the island after the storm, he realized that things were worse than anyone knew.
Andrés told the NYT that at one point he was asked by the Salvation Army to provide over 100 hot meals. “In my life I never expected the Salvation Army to be asking me for food,” he said. “If one of the biggest NGOs comes to us for food, who is actually going to be feeding Puerto Rico? We are. We are it.” Andrés, “like a general at war,” spurred into action, organizing his crew and volunteers with communications equipment “and a big paper map of all the feeding stations on the island”:
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.
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.
Our fellow U.S. citizens aren’t just being fed, they’re being nourished with hearty rice dishes and fresh fruits, a far cry from the Cheez-It crackers, beef jerky, and “tuna chunks” reportedly distributed to some by FEMA. The agency “repeatedly declined to answer questions about whether it has distributed specific items, such as Skittles, that have become the subject of social media scorn,” according to the Washington Post.
Now after more than a month of operations, local stores and food stands reopening, and FEMA securing contracts with local vendors, the chef is winding down “Chefs for Puerto Rico,” though a “core crew will most likely keep things going until Thanksgiving, with one main kitchen and a handful in some of the neediest regions.” Andrés said he doesn’t want to interfere with the local economies of street vendors and others. “An NGO has no right taking money away from business”:
Mr. Andrés flew home to Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “This has been like my little Vietnam, but now I need to go back to normal life,” he said.
He never intended to stay as long as he did, he said. Or to feed an island.
“At the end, I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t try to do what I thought was right,” he said. “We need to think less sometimes and dream less and just make it happen.”
It’s also important to remember that federal agencies, with their resources, wield, and ability to collaborate with local communities and groups like World Central Kitchen, play a vital role in our nation’s recovery efforts—if they have the will do it. In the case of Puerto Rico, the complete disregard of basic human dignity for people on the island can only be seen as intentional when the administrator admits he’s ignoring a prominent local leader. In this particular case, Chef Andrés stepped in where he was sorely needed. We thank you and your volunteers for doing it, chef.